Page 62 - DMGT501_OPERATIONS_MANAGEMENT

Operations Management

Notes The legal issues involved in designing products and services are- patents, trademarks,
copyrights, product liability and Uniform Commercial Code whereas the Environment
Protection Act governs the issues relating the environment.
The product lifecycle model is a simple representation of the cumulative impact of changes
in the business environment on the life of a manufactured product.

Statistical regularities show that the product lifecycle can be used to forecast the way the
product attributes, demand, production and competition will change as the product matures.
A mature industry can continue indefinitely. Competitors with more abundant resources,
cheaper labour or subsidized capital can obtain a competitive advantage.
The length and pattern of the Product Lifecycle can vary significantly. There is no reason
to believe that all products inevitably pass through all four stages, e.g., fad items, consumer
resistance, and introduction of superior new product.
Without products, there would be no customers. Without customers, there would be no
revenue. Developing a new product is a major activity.
Organizations are more concerned about being the first to develop an idea or design a
product so that they can protect their markets. Being able to design, develop, and introduce
a new product quickly gives a firm 'fast to market' capabilities.
The basis for concurrent engineering is the significant overlap among the different phases
of product development.
Delayed differentiation concept suggests that producers should add options or make
differentiating changes to the product close to the time of purchase by the end use customer.
Commonality of components used to manufacture similar products is essential to reduce
the number of components to be held in stock to cater to all possible combinations of a
customer's customization spree.
The concept of mass customisation is built on the concept of postponement. This is the
extreme form of postponement as the product is subject to the final configuration as and
when the customers' specific order is known.
Standard end products enable manufacturers to use 'make to stock' market orientations,
thereby decoupling manufacturing decisions from market transactions.
DFM is the process of designing a product for efficient production while maintaining the
highest level of quality.
Services can be classified on the basis of the degree of contact with the customer. The
extent of customer contact can be defined as the percentage of time the customer must be
in the system relative to the time it takes to perform the customer service.
Reliability serves as a measure of quality of the product and service design. The quality
associated with a product often increases with the dependability of the product customer
experience.
There are two suggested approaches for improving the reliability of a system: fault
avoidance and fault tolerance. Fault avoidance is achieved by using high-quality and
high-reliability components and is usually less expensive than fault tolerance.

When running virtual tests using CAD, alterations to the design can be made quickly and
easily, so new designs can be tested and retested until the problem is resolved.

56 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY