2.9 The design of new products, processes and services
Here, design should be seen from an operations perspective. Ideas can come from customers, competitors, staff or R&D and they can be classified as:
\- Market-pull (wants and needs of customers, ideas can find a ready market)
\- Technology-push (uses for unexploited technological solutions)
There are several stages in the design process:
1\. Idea generation
2\. Screening (to reduce ideas to manageable number, use market research, financial implications, operations capabilities)
3\. Preliminary design (for enough for a prototype)
4\. Evaluation and improvement (before testing in the market)
5\. Prototyping and final design (visualise how manufacturing process works, pilot offerings)
There is a big different between the Japanese and the Western approach to design. Time-to-Market is often crucial, especially in rapidly changing markets, and Japan is partly successful because they have a constant stream of new models based on multi-functional team work (e.g. Sony Clies). The idea is constantly exchanged between players in different departments (“simultaneous engineering”) (example given of Sony Walkman, with one person pushing the product through because of belief that it will succeed.)
The Western approach is more of a relay race where things are passed from department to department with their own priorities which results in departments not looking into problems or opportunities that might show somewhere else.
The process design is about making the new product/service available in a way that satisfies all relevant stakeholders. Process types look at volume and variety of the output which results in 5 process types, namely:
\- Project (low, one of a kind volume and highly customized, large IT projects)
\- Jobbing (letterhead design)
\- Batch (commercial bakery)
\- Mass (electrical billing operations)
\- Continuous (highly standardized and high volume, petrochemicals).
To choose a process type one needs to consider what moving off the above diagonal means. You might be too standardized/customized for your volume level or invest too little in technology for your volume based on your standardization.
For service process types might look more at degree of customization and labour intensiveness instead of volume:
\- Professional service (highly trained specialists)
\- Service shops (trained specialists, universities, travel shops)
\- Mass services (banks, supermarkets)
\- Service factories (little interaction between customer and provider)
Another important part is the layout (arrangement of physical facilities) and flow (how things move through the operations system).
\- Fixed layout: one position for all tasks, difficult to schedule, associated with projects e.g. construction, music festivals
\- Process (functional) layout: arrangements according to common process, high flexibility and interesting work but difficult to control, low utilisation and high work-in-progress; e.g. school
\- Cell layout: type of products are grouped, high throughput but still interesting; e.g. factories, cafeterias
\- Product layout: in order of the stages of the product, lowest unit-cost in high volume, use of specialised equipment, very repetitive; e.g. car assembly plant
To choose the appropriate layout you need to consider:
\- cost and flexibility of the process
\- time and distance that materials and customers travel in the process
\- flow of materials, information and customers through the operation
Finding the best way requires finding the most efficient linked-up materials flow. In general, the order of layouts can be seen as correlated with process types (project — fixed; continuous — product)
In a process-focused operation there will be a flexibility in the flow to allow for customized products (users can find their own way through the supermarket) while in product-focused operations a standardised output for the lowest possible cost is produced like an assembly line where the product takes a pre-defined route.
Operations design has a human and technological side and questions like:
\- how should the jobs be designed?
\- What technologies should be used in the process?
\- What will the role of the customers be in the process?
Need to be asked. Automations and worker skill are adversely correlated.
In job design look at which tasks, sequence, location, interaction, autonomy and skills are needed. Scientific management might work best in things like call centres, fast-food restaurants and theme parks while in other places more empowerment might be needed. Something called the socio-technical systems approach tries to balance the interested of the operation with those of the works, trying systems like autonomous work groups, direct responsibility, cross-training and involvement.
Work measurement is there to analyse the processes to identify delays, stoppages, wasted times and in general steps that do not add value.
As a product moves through it’s lifecycle most innovation will first come from product innovations while later they will come from process innovations. Lots of work has been moved away from humans to be performed by machines, automated.
When choosing a technology Slack et al. suggest looking at three dimensions:
\- degree of automation (are people required to operate it; high: greater reliability, faster processing; low: great flexibility, customization)
\- scale (processing capacity; high: lower unit costs, better capacity utilisation)
\- degree of integration (does it form an integrated system between different technologies; high: faster throughput; low: greater mix and volume flexibility)
It should be remembered that all change carriers risk from safe if you change neither product nor process to high risk if you change both at the same time.