Understand the limitations of design.

1.9 Summary

21 You are responsible for the impact of your products on others. humility in the face of nature. Treat nature as a model and mentor, not as an inconvenience to be evaded or controlled.

8. Seek constant improvement by the sharing of knowledge.

Encourage di- rect and open communication between colleagues, patrons, manufacturers, and users to link long-term sustainable considerations with ethical responsi- bility, and reestablish the integral relationship between natural processes and human activity.

9. Respect relationships between spirit and matter.

Consider all aspects of human settlement including community, dwelling, industry, and trade in terms of existing and evolving connections between spiritual and material consciousness. We will work to respect these principles in the chapters that follow. We intro- duced the concept of “lean” earlier in this chapter as the effort to reduce waste Principle 5. We will revisit this and the other principles throughout the book. In Chap. 11, we will specifically revisit DFS as part of Design for the Environ- ment. In Chap. 12, we focus on product retirement. Many products are retired to landfills, but in keeping with the first three principles, and focusing on the fifth principle, it is best to design products that can be reused and recycled. 1.9 SUMMARY The design process is the organization and management of people and the infor- mation they develop in the evolution of a product. ■ The success of the design process can be measured in the cost of the design effort, the cost of the final product, the quality of the final product, and the time needed to develop the product. ■ Cost is committed early in the design process, so it is important to pay par- ticular attention to early phases. ■ The process described in this book integrates all the stakeholders from the beginning of the design process and emphasizes both the design of the product and concern for all processes—the design process, the manufacturing process, the assembly process, and the distribution process. ■ All products have a life cycle beginning with establishing a need and ending with retirement. Although this book is primarily concerned with plan- ning for the design process, engineering requirements development, concep- tual design, and product design phases, attention to all the other phases is important. PLM systems are designed to support life-cycle information and communication. 22 CHAPTER 1 Why Study the Design Process? ■ The mechanical design process is a problem-solving process that transforms an ill-defined problem into a final product. ■ Design problems have more than one satisfactory solution. ■ Design for Sustainability embodied in the Hannover Principles is becoming an increasingly important part of the design process. 1.10 SOURCES Creveling, C. M., Dave Antis, and Jeffrey Lee Slutsky: Design for Six Sigma in Technology and Product Development, Prentice Hall PTR, 2002. A good book on DFSS. Ginn, D., and E. Varner: The Design for Six Sigma Memory Jogger, GoalQPC, 2004. A quick introduction to DFSS The Hannover Principles, Design for Sustainability . Prepared for EXPO 2000, Hannover, Germany, http:www.mcdonough.comprinciples.pdf Product life-cycle management PLM description based on work at Siemens PLM supplied by Wayne Embry their PLM Functional Architect. http:www.plm.automation.siemens.comen_usproductsteamcenterindex.shtml http:www.johnstark.comepwl4.html PLM listing of over 100 vendors. Ulrich, K. T., and S. A. Pearson: “Assessing the Importance of Design through Product Archaeology,” Management Science, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 352–369, March 1998, or “Does Product Design Really Determine 80 of Manufacturing Cost?” working paper 3601–93, Sloan School of Management, MIT, Cambridge, Mass., 1993. In the first edition of The Mechanical Design Process it was stated that design determined 80 of the cost of a product. To confirm or deny that statement, researchers at MIT performed a study of automatic coffeemakers and wrote this paper. The results show that the number is closer to 50 on the average see Fig. 1.3 but can range as high as 75. Womack, James P., and Daniel T. Jones: Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1996. 1.11 EXERCISES 1.1 Change a problem from one of your engineering science classes into a design problem. Try changing as few words as possible. 1.2 Identify the basic problem-solving actions for a. Selecting a new car b. Finding an item in a grocery store c. Installing a wall-mounted bookshelf

d. Placing a piece in a puzzle

1.3 Find examples of products that are very different yet solve exactly the same design

problem. Different brands of automobiles, bikes, CD players, cheese slicers, wine bot- tle openers, and personal computers are examples. For each, list its features, cost, and perceived quality. 1.4 How well do the products in Exercise 1.3 meet the Hannover Principles?

1.5 To experience the limitations of the over-the-wall design method try this. With a group

of four to six people, have one person write down the description of some object that is