Winter 2010 1

Concept Generation.

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The FSD should have the following information:

1. Project Description and background: A description of the project, and what is the expected level of completion to be accomplished. A high-level system block diagram should be included to aid in presenting the overall concept.

2. Customer Needs: The customer needs and requirements should be listed including their relative importance and priority as completed in the class assignment.

3. Product Specifications: The customer needs are then mapped into project metrics, and preliminary values assigned. Use a Needs/Metrics table to show the linkage of customer needs and measurable metrics. You should include preliminary target values for each specification. A complete FSD should also include a description of each metric and the reason that the team has chosen this measure for the project.

4. Linking of the Project Requirements and Product Specifications: Each critical customer need must have an associated product metric to insure that these critical program and customer requirements are being met. This can easily be shown on the Needs/Metrics chart illustrated in class.

5. Summary: As with any written document, you need to include a summary section which ties all the other sections together and reviews the significant

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Concept Generation• The idea of doing a structured

process to generate design concepts is one of the most difficult concepts to teach.

• What makes it so hard?

• Have you ever done a task only to find out later that there was an easier way? Why did you choose the harder method?

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Phase 1Concept

Development

Phase 2 Phase 5Phase 4Phase 3System-Level

DesignDetailDesign

Testing andRefinement

ProductionRamp-up

MissionStatement

DevelopmentPlan

Concept DevelopmentExhibit 2 Chapter 3 Ulrich & Eppinger

IdentifyCustomer

Needs

EstablishTargetSpecs

GenerateProduct

Concepts

Select aProductConcept

Test ProductConcept

SetFinalSpecs

Plan DownstreamDevelopment

Perform Economic AnalysisBenchmark Competitive Products

Build and Test Models and Prototypes

Concept Development Phase

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5

Why emphasize early concept generation?

“Thorough exploration of alternatives early in the development process greatly reduces the likelihood that the team will stumble upon a superior concept late in the development process or that a competitor will introduce a product with dramatically better performance than the product under development.” Ulrich and Eppinger

Concept generation answers the question of “how” the product will satisfy the customer needs as mapped into the functional specifications.

Concept Generation

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Concept generation

Concept screening

Concept scoring

Concept testing

Iterative Process of Concept Generation

TargetSpecification

ChosenSolution

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• Reduce the likelihood of costly problems later in the development process.– Early concept generation is a very

affordable way of looking at a lot of alternatives.

– Develops confidence in the team that you are not going to be surprised later on.

–A product solution without an alternative is not an acceptable solution--

Advantages of Early Concept Generation

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• What are some of the problems you may encounter w/o a structured approach to concept generation?

– Won’t consider many alternatives.– Influenced by the most dominant

person on the team.– Don’t consider product concepts from

other companies or unrelated products.– Team doesn’t get a “buy in” to the final

proposal.– May miss entire an entire category of

solutions.

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Home Depot Theorem

Time spent in Project Planning =Complexity of the problem

Distance to the nearestHome Depot store

XHome Depot Corollary

Time spent on the actual Project

Complexity of the problem=

Distance to the nearest Home Depot store

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• Concept Generation is a 5 step process1. Clarify the problem. Break it down into

sub-problems, and prioritize. 2. Search externally for existing solutions =

BOF’s.3. Search internally, using individual and

group resources.4. Explore systematically, using concept

fragments.5. Reflect and evaluate.• This is not necessarily a linear process, it

is usually iterative.

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• Step 1 Clarify the problem– Start with the Customer needs analysis

and Functional Specs as inputs– limit the scope of the problem. Don’t

try to “boil the ocean”.– Prioritize the critical subsystems where

you can differentiate your design. You will only have a few areas where you will need to apply the formal process.

– Be sure to list the critical assumptions you are making about the problem.

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• Decomposition of design concepts

Functionaldescription

inputs outputs

Take a “systems” approach to design

The goal of problem decomposition is to help identify the few critical functions for your design.

Every Product Function has a series of inputs and outputs that describe the behavior of the function.

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• Hand held NailerThe design team decomposed the problem into several subproblems: Energy Source, Material (nails), Initiate action

Store orAccept Externalenergy

IsolateNail

ConvertEnergy to

Translationalenergy

StoreNails

Senseinitiation

Triggertool

ApplyTranslationalEnergy to nail

Energy

Initiationaction

Nails DrivenNail

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• In-class exercise #1

– Develop a decomposition function diagram for one of the design subproblems for your project.

– What would be some of the inputs and outputs.

Functionaldescription

inputs outputs

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• Step 2 Search Externally

– Be a pirate! Take the best ideas that others have developed and build on them.

– You don’t have to do everything perfectly. It only takes a couple of areas of differentiation to have a success in the market.

• What technology allowed Honda to become a leader in transportation vehicles.

– Reliable engines.• HP inkjet printers

– An ink that could be boiled to produce droplets.– Colored inks.

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• Search Externally

– Interview lead users.– Consult industry experts.– Search Patents.– Search published literature.– Benchmark related products.

– For you Concept Generation and Selection document, I want you to show evidence of at least two areas where you have researched some external inputs for concept generations.

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• Step 3 Search internally

– Be careful to avoid assuming you know more than you do about a subject.

– Be careful to not over-simplify a problem

– “For every complex problem there is a simple, easy-to-understand, wrong answer.”

– Complex problems usually have complex solutions

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• Search internally

– Use your personal and team knowledge and creativity to generate solution concepts.

– Some guidelines for generating concepts:• Suspend judgment. Don’t be quick to jump to

conclusions.• Generate a lot of ideas. Don’t spend time

evaluating ideas, just capture them.• Welcome “out of the box” ideas. Don’t worry

about feasibility during the initial brainstorming.

• Use graphical and visual methods to capture ideas. Quick drawings and sketches are great.

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• Step 4 Explore Systematically

– At this point the team should have a collection of concept fragments—solutions to the subproblems. The goal of systematic exploration is to synthesize a complete solution from the concept fragments.

– The problem is that not all fragments will work together in a final solution space. Your job is to come up with practical concepts from all the pieces.

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• Systematic exploration– There are two tools that can help the

team in navigating through the maze of concept fragments:

– 1. The concept classification tree, and,– 2. The concept combination table.

– Concept classification tree helps to divide the solutions into independent categories,

– And the concept combination table helps in the selection of possible fragments.

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• Systematic exploration• concept classification tree

Store orAcceptenergy

Chemical

Hydraulic

Electrical

Pneumatic

Fuel-air systemExplosive System

Oil pressure system

Wall outletBatteriesFuel Cell

External air system

Internal air system

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• Concept classification tree

– What are we trying to accomplish with the tree?

• Prune less promising branches quickly.• Identify independent approaches to the

problem.• Find where gaps may exist in the concept

fragments.• Refine the thought process for a particular

branch.

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• Concept combination table

– This is a tool to link fragments into complete solutions.

– The first step is to identify the general functional diagram for the anticipated solution.

ConvertEnergy to translational energy

Accumulate Translational energy

Apply Translational energy to nail

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• Concept combination tables

– Step 2 is to put all concept fragments into a column of the combination table. This helps to identify if concept fragments are missing or redundant.

– Step 3 is to link concept fragments into complete solutions. This also shows where more evaluation or exploration is necessary.

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• Concept combination tables• Step 1- add fragments to the table

Convert Electrical energy to translational energy

AccumulateEnergy

Apply translational energy to nail

Rotary motor with transmission

Linear Motor

Solenoid

Rail gun

Spring

Moving Mass

Single impact

Multiple impact

Push nail

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• Concept combination tables• Step 2- connect fragments into solutions

Convert Electrical energy to translational energy

AccumulateEnergy

Apply translational energy to nail

Rotary motor with transmission

Linear Motor

Solenoid

Rail gun

Spring

Moving Mass

Single impact

Multiple impact

Push nail

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• Concept combination tables

– As you can see, there are a lot of combinations available. (4 x 2 x 3)

– Many obviously don’t make sense and can be quickly eliminated.

– However, you often find a new idea by looking at the possible combinations of concept fragments.

– Remember, this is an iterative process, you may have to go back to square one quite often.

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• Step 5 Reflect and Evaluate

1. Are you confident that the solution space has been adequately explored?

2. Do you have alternate functional diagrams?

3. Can you decompose the problem in an alternate way?

4. Have you considered external sources?

5. Have everyone’s ideas been considered and integrated into the process?

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– Develop innovative solutions that will meet the target specifications that have been determined by the needs of the customer.

– Find design concepts that will differentiate our solution from the competition.

– Insure that you haven’t overlooked some critical areas of the design.

Concept Generation-Summary

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• Homework assignment

– Complete the FSD. Due on Tuesday Jan 26. Put on website and email a copy to me.

– Email me with 10 concept alternatives for your actual project. We will discuss these in class on Tuesday.

– Information for the next lecture is in chapter 7, Concept Selection in Ulrich and Eppinger

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The Competency Matrix Knowledge

AwarenessYou know You Don't Know

You Know

You Don't Know

Conscious Competent•Facts and data•Past experience•Observations•BOF’s

Unconscious Competent •Skills you possess even though you don't know it•Data you know that you don't know you will need.

Conscious Incompetent •Information that needs to be researched.•You fill find people with the required knowledge.•You will avoid making assumptions without dataUnconscious Incompetent •This is the area to avoid.•This is where you get really surprised.•Don't assume that not knowing won't hurt you.