Review of product development challenges for manufactured products and comparison of traditional Waterfall vs Agile approaches.

1. Sebastien buzit
buzits@yahoo.com

3. “Our customers need a blue cube”
Discover
Design
Deploy
Launch
“We have designed the box as follows:
- meets industry standard definition of blue
- passes the drop test
- optimized for manufacturability
“We have created and validated our injection
molding tools, implemented a new assembly
process, and are ramping up our suppliers”
“Our customers have tried the blue
cube but they think red will work best”
Time

4. Discover
Design
Deploy
Launch
Waterfall Approach
(Traditional)
Discover Deploy Review
Agile Approach
Design
Discover Deploy ReviewDesign
Discover Deploy ReviewDesign
Deploy ReviewDesign

Iteration 1
Finalize design and testing
based on refined customer
feedback
Manufacturing investments
Finalize manufacturing
processes
ProjectTimeline
Iteration 2
Iteration 3
Finalization (if needed)

5. Product
Range
Assumed Customer needs
?
?
?
?
Assumed Customer needs
?
?
?
?
“More to the left!”
?
?
“Higher!”
“Good!”
Waterfall Approach (Traditional)
Agile Approach
Project Timeline
Adjusting angle Adjusting force
How did we do?
Real
Customer
needs
Adjusted assumed
Customer needs

6. Waterfall Approach (Traditional) Agile Approach
Pros:
- Efficient when we are 100% confident of the
product to release
- Everything is in place and we are able to
fully support sales when project is
completed
Cons:
- Waste of time and money when customer
needs are not well understood
- Long time before we can offer customers a
solution
- Higher chance of failure
- Many assumptions about features and
requirements
- We rarely are 100% confident that the
customer will purchase
Pros:
- Quick turnaround on product release /
prototypes and customer review
- Validate the new product meets customer
needs before making investments
- Focused on customer feedback, postpones
some technical barriers until we have
confidence in requirements
Cons:
- Easier to implement in Software industry
than Manufacturing industry
- Product is not 100% ready for sale after
each iteration (manufacturing ramp up)
- Some technical risks since design evaluation
is not as thorough at each iteration

7. Agile Approach
- Reduces development times
- Helps selecting the right idea
- Reduces risk