Hi, I have to complete a Product Design and Development Plan on a startup company on renewable energy, Daylight Energy Consulting, making solar panels. Sadly the professor is looking for real current data. Attach is what I have for this made up for Daylight Energy Consulting. In my attachment you can see, I have used facts or close to real support as possiable.
I am looking for one-two pages.
A reference if you find useful;
Generate Product Concepts: Designers and engineers develop a number of product concepts to illustrate what types of products are both technically feasible and would best meets the requirements of the target specifications. Engineers develop preliminary concepts for the architecture of the product, and industrial designers develop renderings to show styling and layout alternatives. After narrowing the selection, non-functional appearance models are built of candidate designs.
Refine Product Specifications: In this stage, product specifications are refined on the basis of input from the foregoing activities. Final specifications are the result of tradeoffs made between technical feasibility, expected service life, projected selling price, and the financial limitations of the development project. With a new luggage product, for example, consumers may want a product that is lightweight, inexpensive, attractive, and with the ability to expand to carry varying amounts of luggage. Unfortunately, the mechanism needed for the expandable feature will increase the selling price, add weight to the product, and introduce a mechanism that has the potential for failure. Consequently, the team must choose between a heavier, more costly product, or one that does not have the expandable feature. When product attributes are in conflict, or when the technical challenge or higher selling price of a particular feature outweighs its benefits, the specification may be dropped or modified in favor of other benefits.
Plan the Remaining Development Project: In this final stage of concept development, the team prepares a detailed development plan which includes a list of activities, the necessary resources and expenses, and a development schedule with milestones for tracking progress.
System Level Design
System-level design, or the task of designing the architecture of the product, is the subject of this stage. In prior stages, the team was focused on the core product idea, and the prospective design was largely based on overviews rather than in-depth design and engineering. Once the development plan is approved, marketing may begin to develop ideas for additional product options and add-ons, or perhaps an extended product family. Designers and engineers develop the product architecture in detail, and manufacturing determines which components should be made and which should be purchased, and identifies the necessary suppliers.
The product architecture defines the product in chunks, or the primary functional systems and subsystems, and how these systems are arranged to work as a unit. For example, an automobile is comprised of a body and a chassis with an engine, a transmission, final drive, frame, suspension and braking system. The architecture of an automobile design determines the platform layout, whether the vehicle is front-wheel-drive or rear-wheel-drive, the size and location of the engine, transmission and final drive, the overall design of suspension system, and the layout and type of other necessary subsystems such as brakes, wheels, and steering. The architecture may determine the layout of the exhaust system, but it would not provide the detailed engineering needed to determine the diameter and thickness of the exhaust pipe, the detailed design of mufflers, nor the engineering of motor mounts and exhaust hangers needed to isolate vibrations from the passenger compartment.
The architecture of the product, how it is divided into chunks and how the chunks are integrated into the total product, impacts a number of important attributes such as standardization of components, modularity, options for change later on, ease of manufacture, and how the development project is divided into manageable tasks and expenses. If a family of products or upgrades and add-ons are planned, the architecture of the product would determine the commonality of components and the ease with which upgrades and add-ons can be installed. A system or subsystem borrowed from another product within the company’s line will economize on development, tooling and manufacturing costs. With outsourced components, the supplier may contribute much of the associated design and engineering.
Detail Design
Detail design, or design-for-manufacture, is the stage wherein the necessary engineering is done for every component of the product. During this phase, each part is identified and engineered. Tolerances, materials, and finishes are defined, and the design is documented with drawings or computer files. Increasingly, manufacturers and developers are turning to three-dimensional solid modeling using programs such as Pro-Engineer. Three-dimensional computer models form the core of today’s rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing technologies. Once the database has been developed, prototype components can be rapidly built on computerized machines such as CNC mills, fused deposition modeling devices, or stereo lithography systems.
Testing and Refinement
During the testing and refinement stage, a number of prototypes are built and tested. Even though they are not made from production components, prototypes emulate production products as closely as possible. These alpha prototypes are necessary to determine whether the performance of the product matches the specifications, and to uncover design shortfalls and gain in-the-field experience with the product in use. Later, beta prototypes are built from the first production components received from suppliers.
Production Ramp-up
During production ramp-up, the work force is trained as the first products are being assembled. The comparatively slow product build provides time to work out any remaining problems with supplier components, fabrication, and assembly procedures. The staff and supervisory team is organized, beginning with a core team, and line workers are trained by assembling production units.
Technology-Push Products
The generic development process is used with technology-push products, but with slight modification. With technology-push products, the company acquires or develops a new technology and then looks for appropriate markets in which to apply the technology. Consequently, an extra phase is added at the beginning during which the new technology is matched to an appropriate market opportunity. When the match has been made, the generic development process is carried out as described.
Models and Prototypes
The terms prototype and model are often used interchangeably to mean any full-scale pre-production representation of a design, whether functional or not. I prefer to use the term model to describe a non-functional representation and the term prototype to describe a functional item. Anappearance model is a full-scale, non-functional representation that looks, as closely as possible, identical to the prospective new product. Modeling and prototyping serve a variety of purposes throughout the develop