The Need for Data and the Theme for 2024-2025
Hello Product Design and Development Division (PD3) Members!
I hope this newsletter finds you well, and you were able to enjoy some time with family over the holiday season. As we come back from the holidays many of us are setting resolutions for our own personal and professional development and how to improve over last year. We are often instructed to use the “SMART” goal-setting framework to carefully plan out and achieve these goals. While it is sometimes easy to do this type of goal setting when focused on an individual, it can be difficult to achieve when a team is involved. Additionally, many of us are tasked with leading and supporting product design tasks in our professional roles. These jobs often deal with “fuzzy” front-end work, where only an over-arching, sometimes inspiring 😊, task is laid in front of us. However, there is not really a clear solution, or obvious path in how to achieve these tasks. To compound the challenges, we often have to achieve these goals with a dynamic team of individuals coming in and out of the project at different phases. Therefore, it can be really beneficial for us as leaders and team members to implement this SMART framework when dealing with our plastic components.
S – Specific
Last year, one of our board members, Mark MacLean-Blevins, laid out a great framework for us to follow when we are tasked with making our product designs more sustainable. In his article, he states “The design engineer will begin with a set of requirements for the product or part and will proceed to create the initial design solution concepts”. Building on this statement, it is also important that, relatively early on in this process, we get specific with what we want these end product metrics to be. Metrics like what markets are we targeting, what environments our products will be utilized in, what regulatory requirements need to be met, and what cost targets we are looking to achieve. Establishing these metrics can help us in tasks like material selection, manufacturing process selection, and design optimization. They can also act like an anchor for the team to reference as individuals come in and out of the project so we ensure we are moving in the correct direction. Check out our article in this newsletter, about the importance of building a product profile to help establish these specifications.
M – Measurable
Being specific, as outlined above, can help us engineers and designers understand what data we may need to help guide our design process and vet viable solutions. While there is a lot of great data out there for metals, polymers and plastics have less robust data which requires careful consideration in how our material selection may dictate our design envelope for a component or product.
he Division’s mission statement is, “The continual improvement in the quality of the design and development of plastics products”. In light of that, we are always trying to gather useful data and make it accessible to our membership. In fact, our mission for this year is “Getting the Right Data to Achieve The Right Design”. Therefore, follow us on LinkedIn,bookmark our design guide archives, or reach out to one of our board members to see how they might help you along in your plastic part design journey!
A – Achievable
While most of us reading this newsletter are champions of plastics and how they enhance our design and experience, we must admit that plastics also do have their limitations. It is important that we utilize the materials responsibly and sustainably. Therefore, we must look at potential failure modes and the effects on our product design. Often identified as FMEA, performing this activity effectively means we are taking lessons learned from previous failures and applying them to this new product. This usually suggests we have the previous experience. However, not all designers have experience with plastics or a new market. Therefore, we encourage you to check out our column by our Board titled “Gallery of Goofs”. This can be a great way for you to learn about failures our veteran board has gone through, without getting all the bumps and bruises we have gotten.
R – Relevant
An easy way to fail in setting a goal is to get overwhelmed with all the variables and potential failures we may need to address in our product design. It is important to make sure we are always focusing on the product metrics that are most important and will move the needle for our involvement in the project. Therefore, we must make sure we are bringing relevant data to the discussion to help support our direction without excessively delaying the program or team.
T – Time Bound
In the product development field, we are always managing risk. Therefore, we must balance having the perfect design and data versus having a good enough design. Delaying our product development process because of unknowns may delay the release of our product, costing us market share or anticipated profits. However, rushing through the process can result in releasing a product that delivers a poor user experience from which we may not be able to recover. Therefore, it is important we establish proper timelines to address any critical risks we deem are achievable in our product. This is always difficult for engineers, as we strive for perfection. However, we hope that through your interactions with our division you can find resources (either websites, or individuals) that can help keep your program moving along.
f you are still reading this, I hope you feel inspired and uplifted as we begin our new year of challenges in the product design field. We look forward to hearing from you about what topics you would like to see more about in our various platforms. Feel free to reach out to myself or anyone on the Board and let us know what we should be focused on. Hopefully, we will even get to see many of you at one of our events this year!
Until we connect again, I hope you all enjoy the content of this newsletter!
Erik Foltz
PD3 Chair (2023-2025)
The Madison Group
