This book contains material developed for use in an interdisciplinary graduate course on product development that we have been teaching at MIT. Participants in this course MBA students at the MIT Sloan School of Management, graduate students from the MIT School of Engineering, and industrial design students from the Rhode Island School of Design. While we aimed the book at interdisciplinary graduate-level audiences such as this, many faculty teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in engineering design have also found the material useful. Product Design and Development is also for practicing professionals. Indeed, we could not avoid writing for a professional audience because most of our students are themselves professionals who have worked either in product development or in closely related functions.
This book blends the perspectivers of marketing, design, and manufacturing into a single approach to product development. As a result, we provide students of all kinds an appreciation for the realities of industrial practice and for the complex and essential roles played by the various members of product development teams. For industrial practitioners, in particular, we provide a set of product development methodologies that can be put into immediate practice on development projects.
1. Introduction
2. Development Processes and Organizations
3. Identifying Customer Needs
4. Establishing Product Specifications
5. Consept Generation
6. Concept Selection
7. Product Architeccture
8. Industrial Design
9. Design For Manufacturing
10. Effective Prototyping
etc.