HCLT Whitepaper: 10 Easy Steps Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device

10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to
Select the Right Concept for your Medical
Device

February 2011

10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device |
February 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ............................................................................................. 3

Abbreviations .................................................................................... 4

Market trend ...................................................................................... 5

Other Challenges .............................................................................. 6

10 Easy Steps for Concept Selection ............................................... 7

Benefits of Implementing 10 Easy Steps for Concept Selection..... 12

Conclusion....................................................................................... 13

About the Authors ........................................................................... 14

© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

February 2011

Abstract
Organizations that consistently struggle to meet the planned project
schedule and cost, simply cannot pinpoint the product designer on
why things are not working as they should. The current development
process may have an issue that needs to be evaluated. For a
product designer, selecting the right concept out of multiple
concepts will save a lot of time and project cost, and help
organization to launch the product to market on time. In many
projects cost and time lines exceed due to incorrect selection of the
concepts. This usually ends up in poor quality products and rework.

This paper provides easy 10 steps and some powerful techniques
that would help you select the best out of the multiple concepts

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February 2011

Abbreviations

Sl. No. Acronyms (Page No.) Full form

1 CF (Page-7) Critical Factor

2 KT (Page-7) Knowledge
Transfer

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February 2011

 Design outsourcing Market trend
 Multinational Why should you revisit the current development process?
development team What will happen if you do not have right process for concept
selection?
 Product launch at right
time Over the last few years, the time taken to market products is
shrinking considerably when compared to past market development.
This has forced companies to launch their own high-quality products
in a short duration sustain their existing market and to improve their
present level. Now-a-days, business has become heavily dependent
on the launch of new product at the right time. Additionally,
companies must meet customer expectations that are changing
every day.

On one side, the new product design and development investments
are very high, and on the other side, the products get outdated very
quickly due to various reasons. Now, most of the organizations have
started design outsourcing to reduce timeline and project cost.
However, complications have increased further due to the
involvement of the multinational development team and different
concept selection processes. Therefore, new product outsourcing
trends need to implement a very successful concept selection
process.

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February 2011

 How to select the best
concept? Other Challenges
Additional challenges/questions that point the need of a good
- 10 simple steps with
concept selection process for the designer are as follows:
useful tips and templates
 Are you confused about  Usually, in most of the projects, the concept generation and
finalization phases not completed on time when compared to
selecting the best
the detailed design phase.
concept?
 Why do you face project escalation and customer dissatisfaction
- 10 steps to help you select during the concept phase?
the best concept  Why are projects terminated after the concept design phases?
 Why are you missing the Water Fall approach in development
 Are you spending a lot of phase?
time and money to select  Why is it that some projects are doing well while others are not?
the best concept?  Why do some selected concepts miss critical requirements of
the customer?
- 10 easy steps that could  How to involve customer or management team during the
save your cost and time concept selection phase?
 How to meet new or unknown customer expectations?
 How to gain customer or management confidence and improve
the customer relationship from beginning of the project?

There are several problems or challenges as these that are
associated with the mishandling of concept phase in new product
development project.

If organizations consistently mishandle projects particularly during
the initial phase of the project, the product launch and costing will
be affected and the organization loses revenue.

Fortunately, you have 10 steps for the best concept selection that
can help your organization to increase the success rate.

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February 2011

10 Easy Steps
10 Easy Steps for Concept Selection
 Identification of CF
 Weightage allocation and For any new product development project, the concept design
phase commences after the customer requirements are ready.
ranking on ideas
During this phase, the project team will be formed and different
 Establish Base concept concepts will be generated for evaluation. We have a unique
template for the best concept selection that will help handle the
 Team formation and KT concept phase to achieve best results.
 Generate Concepts
Step 1: Determine Critical Factors (CF) for Concept Design
 Concept Evaluation
 Concept Ranking The concept generation process starts with preparation of the
criteria or critical concept selection factors based on understanding
 Hybrid Solutions customer‟s requirements with respect to the following aspects:
 Re evaluate
 Critical to performance
 Selection and Sign-off  Critical to usability
 Critical to product cost
 Critical to reliability
 Critical to manufacturability and assembly
 Critical to safety
 Critical to regulatory

This list can be customized based on the nature of products. For the
selected criteria, define the evaluation methods on how to check the
critical factors. These details will help the team to understand the
complete expectation on the new concepts.

Step 2: Weightage Allocation and Concept Ranking Scale
Definition for CF

 Weightage allocation

The next step includes allocation of the weightage in the scale of 1-
5 for each critical factor (CF). You must assign high weightage for
the most important CF and low weightage for the least important CF.
The best practice would involve the team to allocate weightage for
each of these critical factors. Additionally, the client and other stake
holders can also be involved in this exercise.

 “Ranking on ideas”- Create a common
understanding

Once the allocation of weightage for each CF is done, define how to
rank each concept against these critical factors. The ranking score
scale can include 1-5 range, similar to CF weightage scale.

Since the ranking exercise is a collective team effort, the detailed
definition of ranking score scale is very important, to arrive at a
common understanding among the team members.

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February 2011

The very important part of this exercise is to get the concurrence of
both the team members and client on CF weightage and ranking
score scale. The “weighted score” of each concept is arrived by
multiplying these two parameters which will be finally used to rank
the best concept.

Weighted score = CF scale x Ranking score

Another best practice is to involve the client team also in this
process. This will help the team to gain confidence on the process
of best concept selection. It will also ensure overall agreement on
the best selected concept.

Step 3: Establish a Base Concept and Communicate

The main objective of this step is to demonstrate the basic
understanding of the design requirements through a base concept.
This would be a guideline/template for the team members to
communicate the concepts. This could be in the form of:

 Hand sketches,
 Schematics,
 Storyboard,
 Process flow chart, and so on.

This step will ensure that each team member provides identical
output formats. This will help reduce unnecessary rework during
concept rating.

Step 4: Team Formation and Knowledge Transfer

Once the basic concept is ready and accepted by all stake holders,
the team will be formed based on various skills required for the
particular concept generation. The team composition will be arrived
based on the nature of the product.

The next activity is to transfer knowledge to the team. The
knowledge transfer would pertain to the following areas which are to
be addressed as part the new concepts:

 Critical new product design requirements and its
applications
 Demonstration of the basic concepts and expectations
with respect to new concepts
 Finalized critical factors for concept selection and
rationale behind the allocated weightage
 Concept rating scale definitions and rationale behind
the allocated score

The best practice is to provide hardcopies of the critical
requirements list and rating scale to the team along with concept

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February 2011

review checklist to ensure 100% coverage of the design
requirements in the new concept.

Step 5: Generate Concepts

Now team is ready for new concept generation. You can adapt the
following methodologies:
 Brain storming - Capture all ideas
 Web search - Understand information on relevant
patents, latest technologies and development, so on.
 Study similar products in the market - Understand
factors such as usability, customer expectation, and so
on.
The project team also can develop its own methodologies to
generate new concepts.

Step 6: Concept Evaluation

Before getting on to the concepts evaluation, it is proposed to filter
or eliminate the ideas which are not potential for further concept
evaluation. This activity could be done as team deliberations. If the
number of concepts is not sufficient, then step 5 can be repeated to
generate some more potential concepts.

Once the required number of potential concepts is ready, the
following activities can be performed for concept evaluation:

1. Ranking on ideas

Ranking of ideas is a team activity. Here, each potential concept
is ranked on the scale of 1-5 based on the understanding of the
detailed definition of ranking score. Generally, rank 1 represents
Minimum and rank 5 represents Maximum. Higher the score,
better the advantage (For more details, refer to step 2).

Best practices:

 Get the same exercise carried out by the client team or
the management team separately.

 Capture the understandings and assumptions made
while ranking concepts against each CF, which could
be discussed and agreed with the client team.

2. Concept Average weighted score calculation

During this stage, the individual weighted score for the each CF
will be calculated automatically based on the ranking of each
concept. Once it is done, the total average weighted score for a
particular concept will be populated automatically.

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February 2011

The same exercise will be performed for the rest of the
concepts and the total average weighted score for each concept
will be calculated.

Step 7: Concept Ranking

1. Concept Average Weighted Total Score- Team Review

Before concluding on the final average weighted total score for
the each concept, it is proposed to have a team walkthrough
along with the client on the outcome. This exercise will give a
common understanding and acceptance among the team
members about the concept ranking.

2. Select 2-3 best concepts based on weighted totals

Here, all the concepts will be ranked based on the total average
weighted scores (Highest rank = Max average weighted score
and Least rank = Min average weighted score). Once this is
done, the first two or three highest ranked concepts will be
considered for the next stage.

Step 8: Look for Hybrid Solutions

1. Prepare CF profile for the selected concepts

The purpose of this step is to highlight the ranking of each CF for all
concepts that can be represented in a single chart. This can be
done using a Web chart. This graphical representation will give a
better understanding on performance of each of the concepts
against each CF.

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February 2011

2. Mix and match the best features of the selected concepts

Based on the Web chart representation, the best features among
the concepts can be selected and implemented in the maximum
ranked concepts. This will add more value to the concepts and may
reduce the cost. The suggested feature information can be captured
in the individual concept tab in the concept selection template.

3. Generate Hybrid Solutions

New concepts can be generated by using the best features of all
concepts. These concepts can be evaluated based on the CF to
address the advantages and disadvantages of combining the best
features. This evaluation will be carried out in the next step.

Step 9: Re-evaluate Ideas

After implementing the suggested improvements on the concepts,
the concepts can then be re-evaluated against the CF.

Step 10: Best Concept Selection and Sign-off

Based on the ranking, the highest ranked concepts can be selected
for further development.

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February 2011

 Product time to market Benefits of Implementing 10 Easy Steps for Concept
 Avoid reworks in design Selection
implementation  Enables the project team to complete their concept
 Documented in single file design phase successfully in every project
 Improves the new product time to market success rate
 Visual communication of  Enhances the project team contribution and customer
concepts confidence during the concept design phase of the
project
 Easily adaptable  Enables systematic validation of concepts
 Maximizes organization‟s value among competitors
 Reduces project expense during concept design phase
 Reduces organizational risks on the best concept
selection for new products
 Simplifies the concept selection process
 Avoids reworks during the design implementation
phase
 Easily adaptable for any new product development
process
 All the generated concepts are documented in a single
file that can be referred for future purpose
 Acts as a visual communication tool for the evaluation

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February 2011

Conclusion
Over the years, HCL has developed some very good tools for the
selection of concepts. These tools enable us to identify good
concepts easily. Depending on the types of product, the selection
process needs to be customized. It is imperative to develop a
process based on the product type. With rich experience in
developing products for different fields such as Aero and Medical
Devices, and a range of products within the Medical Devices field
such as Orthopedics and Diagnostics, HCL was able to implement a
proper and easy way of selecting good concepts.

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February 2011

About the Authors
• Tamilnambi N A – has over 11 years of
experience in new product design and
development on electro mechanical products that
include 4 years of medical product design. He has
worked in Patient Monitoring VAVE project, Breast
Biopsy Device development, and Cryo Ablation
System development. He is a PMP certified
professional.

• Sivaprakash S – has over 6 years of experience
in new product design and development on
electro- mechanical products including 2 years of
medical product design. He has worked in Cryo
Ablation System development and Nerve
monitoring systems.

14

Hello, I’m from HCL’s Engineering and R&D Services. We enable
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solutions. We partner with our customers in building world class
products & creating the associated solution delivery ecosystem to help
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For more details contact eootb@hcl.com
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http://ers.hclblogs.com/
Visit our website http://www.hcltech.com/engineering-services/

About HCL
About HCL Technologies
HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company, working
with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their
businesses. Since its inception into the global landscape after its IPO in
1999, HCL focuses on „transformational outsourcing‟, underlined by
innovation and value creation, and offers integrated portfolio of services
including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure management,
engineering and R&D services and BPO. HCL leverages its extensive
global offshore infrastructure and network of offices in 26 countries to
provide holistic, multi-service delivery in key industry verticals including
Financial Services, Manufacturing, Consumer Services, Public Services
and Healthcare. HCL takes pride in its philosophy of „Employee First‟
which empowers our 72,267 transformers to create a real value for the
customers. HCL Technologies, along with its subsidiaries, had
st
consolidated revenues of US$ 3.1 billion (Rs. 14,101 crores), as on 31
December 2010 (on LTM basis).For more information, please visit
www.hcltech.com

About HCL Enterprise
HCL is a $5.5 billion leading global technology and IT enterprise
comprising two companies listed in India - HCL Technologies and HCL
Infosystems. Founded in 1976, HCL is one of India's original IT garage
start-ups. A pioneer of modern computing, HCL is a global
transformational enterprise today. Its range of offerings includes
product engineering, custom & package applications, BPO, IT
infrastructure services, IT hardware, systems integration, and
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products across a wide range of focused industry verticals. The HCL
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operate from 29 countries including over 500 points of presence in
India. HCL has partnerships with several leading Global 1000 firms,
including leading IT and technology firms. For more information, please
visit www.hcl.com

HCLT Whitepaper: 10 Easy Steps Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device

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HCLT Whitepaper: 10 Easy Steps Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device