A thorough lesson in designing

THE EDITOR: One of the most important areas in manufacturing that is not taken seriously is design, product design.

Product design is the engine room in manufacturing. If a manufacturer has a well designed innovative product, makes the best use of his manufacturing capabilities, distribution channels and financial resources, he can compete better than the manufacturer who has poorly designed products, better manufacturing technology, better distribution channels and more financial resources.

Design is a strategic weapon for businesses. Design can be used to reduce cost, increase productivity and improve quality.

Design is done by a team made up of design, marketing, production and finance personnel.

It is important that all departments work together so that product design time is reduced and designed the right way.

A well designed product is easy to use, economical to make, appealing to the eye, economical to operate and service, safe and comfortable to use.

Form and Function = Quality

A blend of form and function, quality and style, art and engineering makes the final product.

Let’s look at two aspects of a product:

The product character: Character defines the criteria by which designers judge, develop or revamp product features

Product function analysis: To improve a product’s robustness, means thoroughly understanding a product’s function in relation to production methods.

Another important goal of product function analysis is to reduce the number of parts in a product.

There is a new approach to design; it is called the combinatorial method.

The combinatorial method, carried out by marketing and engineering team members, divides a product into generic parts or sub-assemblies and identifies the necessary variations of each.

The product is then designed to permit any combination of variations of these basic parts to go together physically and functionally — If there are six basic parts and three varieties of each, the company can build 36 = 729 different models — the in-house manufacturing team cooperates in designing the parts, so the manufacturing system can easily handle and make each variety of each part and products.

If this method is applied to the garment industry, it will allow designs to manufacture limited edition designs at mass production cost. The same with fabric design, but making variation of the motifs.

Designers should earn executive salaries. That include those who conceptualise, design and engineer. They are value adding employees.

DALE BANFIELD
Tacarigua