Product design is concerned with the efficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products.
Product Designers conceptualize and evaluate ideas, making them tangible through products in a more systematic approach. Their role is to combine art, science and technology to create tangible three-dimensional goods. This evolving role has been facilitated by digital tools that allow designers to communicate, visualize and analyze ideas in a way that would have taken greater manpower in the past.
Product design is sometimes confused with industrial design, industrial design is concerned with the aspect of that process that brings that sort of artistic form and usability usually associated with craft design to that of mass produced goods.
Process Product designers follow various methodology that requires a specific skill set to complete.
Initial Stage
§ Idea Generation can be from imagination, observation or research.
§ Need Based Generation can be from the need to solve a problem, the need to follow the popular trends or the need for a product to do a specific task.
Mid Stage
§ Design Solutions arise from meeting user needs, concept development, form exploration, ergonomics, prototyping, materials, and technology.
§ Production involves fabrication and manufacturing the design.
Final Stage
§ Marketing involves selling the product. It can either be client based which mean the a client buys the design and manufactures it and then sells it to customers. Or it can be user based where the product is sold directly to the user by the designer.
Products
MCIS Safety Glass Sdn Bhd produces tempered and laminated safety glass for automotive industry. The company provides high quality windshield and side-windows glasses to local car manufacturers and replacement market.
Laminated
Product Profile:
Laminated glass is made of two sheets of annealed glass bonded together under high heat and pressure with polyvinyl butyral (PVB) film acts as interlayer.
Performance Features:
Safety - This glass provides safety to vehicle occupant when broken. The glass will not peel off and will not cause injury to driver and passenger.
Insulation - This glass provides good sound insulation.
Energy Saving - The glass also provides energy saving effect by significantly reducing heat (Infra Red), discoloration (UV) and reducing direct sunlight. Additional features include Top Shading providing efficient sun screening as well as for aesthetics.
Laminated glass is made of two sheets of annealed glass bonded together under high heat and pressure with polyvinyl butyral (PVB) film acts as interlayer.
Performance Features:
Safety - This glass provides safety to vehicle occupant when broken. The glass will not peel off and will not cause injury to driver and passenger.
Insulation - This glass provides good sound insulation.
Energy Saving - The glass also provides energy saving effect by significantly reducing heat (Infra Red), discoloration (UV) and reducing direct sunlight. Additional features include Top Shading providing efficient sun screening as well as for aesthetics.
Tempered
Product Profile:
Tempered glass is made of normal float glass heated up to certain temperature and then rapidly cooled down is a process called quenching (Tempering). There are two applications of tempered glass, for rear windshield glass and for side window glass.
Performance Features:
High Strength -Tempered glass is 3 to 5 times stronger in strength compared to a normal float glass of same thickness.Safety - Once broken the glass pieces will be in particles with obtuse angle shape which minimizing the risk of injury to driver and passenger.
Heat Stability - The glass is able to withstand extreme cold or hot condition without breaking.
Energy Saving - The glass also provides energy saving effect by significantly reducing heat (Infra Red), discoloration (UV) and reducing direct sunlight
*Overall, designing a product issued by the MCIS is based on customer demand. This is because the MCIS want to make sure customers are satisfied with the services provided by the MCIS. However, the design of the product must be in accordance with standards set FMEA.
FMEA
Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is methodology for analyzing potential reliability problems early in the development cycle where it is easier to take actions to overcome these issues, thereby enhancing reliability through design. FMEA is used to identify potential failure modes, determine their effect on the operation of the product, and identify actions to mitigate the failures. A crucial step is anticipating what might go wrong with a product. While anticipating every failure mode is not possible, the development team should formulate as extensive a list of potential failure modes as possible.
The early and consistent use of FMEAs in the design process allows the engineer to design out failures and produce reliable, safe, and customer pleasing products. FMEAs also capture historical information for use in future product improvement.
Types of FMEA's
There are several types of FMEAs, some are used much more often than others. FMEAs should always be done whenever failures would mean potential harm or injury to the user of the end item being designed. The types of FMEA are:
- System - focuses on global system functions
- Design - focuses on components and subsystems
- Process - focuses on manufacturing and assembly processes
- Service - focuses on service functions
- Software - focuses on software functions
