Bring Design into the Business
If there is to be awareness of how designs affect other functions, designers need to work with and come to understand those functions.Product design has its greatest effect on three key functions:（1）operations, （2）marketing and the customer, and（3）suppliers.
Operations:The Next Process
The designer's“customer”is operations or, more likely, where operations planning is done.In manufacturing, one aspect of operations planning is manufacturing engineering
（sometimes called process engineering）. Manufacturing engineers are equipment and automation experts.Machines—those now in use as well as any being considered for purchase—have limited capabilities.A certain machine may be able to cut aluminum but not brass, machine 14-mm.but not 18-mm.steel, or hold tolerances of 0.005 inches but no better.If the design is to be manufacturable, the designer must somehow acquire some of the manufacturing engineer's knowledge of machine capabilities.
For a number of years, IBM has fed that kind of information to designers through a program called“early manufacturing involvement（EMI）.” Under EMI, IBM assigns a manufacturing engineer to work in a development lab with product designers during a design proj ect.More recently a number of companies, such as Deere and Company and Stanadyne Diesel, have adopted a more permanent solution:putting design engineering and manufacturing engineering under one manager.The single manager has full responsibility for enduring close coordination.An even more profound and rapidly spreading approach is to form design-build teams composed of designers, engineers, other support people, and even line production employees .
Linkage with Marketing
The designer must also close ranks with the final customer—via marketing.Chrysler rescued itself from the grave largely by cost cutting. Design and marketing jointly played a central role.They developed a product 44 line with a narrow range of options having broad appeal instead of the former practice of a broad range with narrow appeal.In other words, the new concept featured just a few standard design“packages”available to the customer.
From the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon, some 8 million permutations of options（excluding colors）had been possible.The new design concept reduced the number of permutations to 42.Chrysler could then focus on making a small number of parts in very high volumes, which offered economy of scale and a narrower target for improving quality.As a result, the price Chrysler had to charge plunged in 1986 to$5,779, which was below that of almost all other cars sold in the United States.
Eliminating options and reducing“part counts”can backfire if not done right. Customers'needs and wants are the foremost concern, and Detroit had been allowing options to proliferate because that seemed to be what customers wanted.Good design, however, can sometimes allow high variety with small part counts; that is, a modest number of parts designed to fit together in many ways can yield a large number of end product variations（Legos, the toy construction blocks, come to mind）.Modular design concepts also allow variety of end products while holding part counts down.For example, personal computer manufacturers offer a variety of compatible products—keyboard, mouse, extramemory, different screens, modems, and so forth—so that the consumer can tailor a system to meet personal needs and budget.
Interface with Suppliers
Design's third accommodation is with suppliers.Designers have major authority in choosing materials, which often is tantamount to choosing the supplier.Company policies, however, sometimes make it difficult for anyone but buyers in the purchasing department to interact directly with suppliers. （Under past purchasing practices, there was really little chance for either buyer or design engineer to interact with suppliers; there simply were too many suppliers.The movement to reduce number of suppliers per part number makes it reasonable to visit suppliers.）Now some companies are beginning to relax such policies.Designers need to visit supplier plants, perhaps along with buyers, in order to learn the suppliers'capabilities.
Top companies are not content with just visiting suppliers.They also seek early supplier involvement, which means inviting suggestions for making the supplied materials or components function better for the customer's intended uses.Often the supplier's designers end up working concurrently with the customer's.Furthermore, instead of the customer's specs being hurled“over the wall”to the supplier, the customer may just specify critical performance specifications.That practice, sometimes called minimal specifications or minimal dimensioning, makes sense only when coordination between supplier and customer are excellent; otherwise, thorough specifications are usually desirable.
Richard J.Schonberger and Edward M.Knod, Jr., Operations Management 3rd ed.© 1988, pp.625-27.Reprinted by permission of Richard D.Irwin, Inc, Homewood, Illinois.
KeyTerms and Concepts
Chrysler one of the three automobile companies in the United States.
Dodge Omni Dodge is a brand name of car.Omni is the name of a model under Dodge.
Plymouth Horizon Plymouth is a brand name of car.Horizon is the name of a model under Plymouth.
economy of scale refers to the positive effects on unit costs of a firm as it increases its scale or plant size over the long run.
Lego name of a company which invented toy construction blocks.Later, people call these blocks“Legos.”
compatible products products with specifications matching the requirements.
Suggestions for Further Study
To learn a foreign language, writing ranks second in importance to reading.In most cases, if a second language learner knows how to write, he knows how to speak.
When a Chinese student recalls his or her years in primary school and those early days when he or she just started to learn how to write Chinese, definitely he or she will think of the red marks his or her teacher made, for a character, or for a sentence.Little by little, day after day, year after year, boys become men and girls become women, with writing greatly improved or even matured.
At a university, if a student, without an instructor or professor to edit his writings, wants to learn writing but does not know how to write, what should he do? In this case, a dictionary can be very helpful, especially the dictionary A Dictionary of Current English Usage（《现代英语用法词典》,张道真编著，上海译文出版社）edited by Professor Daozhen Zhang.This is a dictionary specially designed for English usage.It helps a student to express what he is unable to express in English yet.
For university students, effective writing is crucial.Students need to learn the format of a résumé so they can present themselves well to society when they graduate.Students need to learn the format of a business letter so they can make a better impression when securing employment or applying to a foreign university.Students need to learn the format of footnotes and bibliographies, because when an undergraduate student writes an essay, a graduate student in a master's program writes a thesis or a graduate student in a doctoral program works on a dissertation, they need these skills.Fortunately, in the appendixes of this textbook, students can find samples of the formats of résumé, business letters, footnotes, and bibliographies.
To evaluate writing, many criteria exist.However, among the various alternatives, one is most practical.It says that small words and short sentences are good English.Explaining further, “important”and“big”are small words, and“significant”and“gigantic”are big words.The two sentences presented by Walt Disney in the last paragraph of the text“Free Markets and Growth”of Part Twelve International Economics in this textbook, “Change is inevitable.Growth is not.”are good examples of short English sentences and“床前明月光”is a good example of a short Chinese sentence.When the later becomes long, it could be“老夫那张冰冷的梨花木大床前的地上铺满了昊天明月洒下的银色冷光。”Then the sentence has become very awkward.Remember, when writing, always make sentences as short as possible.
Key Words Writing