A3: Research

ABSTRACT
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to carry out research into an extended activity
of an aspect of the product development process of quality products and services.
Design/Methodology/Approach: A short paper focusing on system design in the
product development process and brief explanations of the activities running in parallel
in the system design process are given in the literature.
Paper Type: Academic literature

Extended activity requiring research of one aspect of product development

process

The product development processes:

1. Planning
2. Concept Development
3. System Design
4. Detail Design
5. Testing and Refinement
6. Production Ramp Up

System Design:

Introduction

WHAT IS A SYSTEM?
According to Mariam Webster dictionary online, a system is “: a regularly interacting or
interdependent group of items forming a unified whole <a number system>: as a (1): a
group of interacting bodies under the influence of related forces <a gravitational
system> (2): an assemblage of substances that is in or tends to equilibrium <a
thermodynamic system>”

System Design is a process that requires quite a few iterations to get right. A carefully
study into a problem, reveals that the solution of a problem and the actual problem
interlock and lie in the same domain and like our good old onion, the system will iterate
through finite details until it finds an optimum solution for the design of the system.
There are common core design activities that run in parallel in the product development
process whether in building, product, service or in IT and computer systems design.
The designer must find optimum solutions to ostensible differing objectives to solve a
given problem. However, at the end of the process, the designer will find that a good
design or a bad design is often liable only to personal decision.
 A typical System Design Process
Redesign

Describe Concept-1,
Customer Prepare Use Define Subsystems & Evaluate
Designs
Needs Cases Interfaces, Designs
Create Design

Manage User
Requirements Describe Concept-2,
Define Subsystems &
Interfaces,
Functions Create Design
definitions
Describe Concept-3,
Define Subsystems &
Develop system Interfaces,
Architecture Create Design
Preliminary Investigation and Business Rationalisation
A critical task here in the system design process is to understand the problem and the
opportunities that are available to creating the design while setting out the boundaries
to the design and the scope. Thorough search for fact must be made and at this phase,
designers ask if the design is feasible and hence a viable design when it is deployed.
The system designers must estimate the cost and time to design the system in order
for the design to continue or an alternative sort

System Analysis and requirements Gathering

The objectives of System Analysis and requirements gathering is to gain a
comprehensive and complete understanding of the business needs as defined by the
origin of the system taken and broken down into separate requirements, which must be
well defined, reviewed and agreed upon to reflect the Customer needs.
A framework is developed at this stage which should act as a basis for all subsequent
designs.
System Requirements analysis and management can be challenging, and it is in this stage
of the process that all customers‟ needs, business rules and business process are
carefully and thoroughly assessed. The efficacy and the final outcome of the system
depend heavily on this process.
Detailed requirements result from effective communication and teamwork among all
members of the system design team, and this procedure provides the best chance of
creating a system that will completely meet the needs of the Customers.
Therefore the prime objective of requirements gathering is to create a detailed
Functional system model for the product or service.

SYSTEM DESIGN – includes decisions concerning but not limited to:

Product or service design
Capacity planning
Process selection and facility layout
Design of business processes
System design decisions have strategic implication for business organization because of
the significant relations between various operations and each of the strategic sectors
of the system, it is vital to the success of the organization to involve all of the
functional areas of the organization in design decisions
PRODUCT OR SERVICE DESIGN
This process is significance in the sense that it aims to transform customer wants and
needs into product and service requirements while improving the present products and
services and according to Garcia and Sangura (2009) the process for designing a
service involves the following steps: (1) accumulating information; (2) developing
conceptual alternatives; (3) screening the concepts; (4) preliminary design; (5)
evaluation and improvement; (6) prototyping and final design. The term „design‟
expresses the different aspects of the structure of an object, as well as the choice of
various parameters by means of which the object is created Rindova & Petkova (2007).
It is the developmental stage of new product and services that set out total quality
management goals, manage cost target, conceptualise and test prototype.
The fact is that adequate information must be gathered to clearly define what the
customer wants and must be communicated to those responsible for designing,
producing and marketing a particular product or service
Systems must be continually aware of what customer wants and have up to date
information of what their competitors are doing. System design must be clear what
government regulations are and what new technologies are available that can provide
their system a competitive advantage.

CAPACITY PLANNING
Capacity planning is a process used to determine the input and output production
capacity of a system designed to meet the needs of its product. Capacity is the
maximum amount of work that a system is capable of completing in a given period of
time.
System design is about determining service level requirements and also defining the
workloads the system can and should handle.
Capacity planning will determine the unit of work and Identify service levels for each
workload.
Blackstone (1989) refers to strategic capacity planning as resource requirements
planning. He gives a few examples of the impact of doing this planning incorrectly and
then states "... the scope of such decision making falls in the realms of economics and
strategic planning..."
Capacity planning analysis the current system capacity and the business process
measuring its service levels compared to its objectives.
It measures the overall resource usage by workload and Identifies components of
response time, making allowance in the system to cope with the future and determining
future processing requirements and planning future system configuration.
PROCESS SELECTION AND FACILITY LAYOUT
Process selection has been recognised as a key in ensuring product quality and
reduction in production cost WANG and LIANG (2005). The type of process selected
for a system will depend on whether the process has repetitive or intermittent
operations. The business service requirements for a product or service typically
determines the operation of the business process requirements which forms the basis
for the selection of the system design process

DESIGN OF BUSINESS PROCESSES

Davenport & Short (1990) define business process as "a set of logically related tasks
performed to achieve a defined business outcome." A process is "a structured,
measured set of activities designed to produce a specified output for a particular
customer or market”.
Business processes as transformations of inputs to outputs

Input Output

In accordance with Davenport's definition of a process, it is safe to conclude that a

process must have clearly defined boundaries, input and output, that it is made up of
smaller parts and activities, which are systematic in time and space, that there must be
some recipient of the process outcome- the end user - and that the change taking place
within the process must add to the customer value

CONCLUSION

Systems design has other activities that can be seen to run across its product
development process for instance: Processes, Design and prototyping.
The discussion in this article so far has touched on processes, design and prototyping.
However in Legal, Intellectual Property, lots of financial resources can be lost if
system design ignores legal and intellectual property. Designs must respect copyright
laws and unnecessary waste of time and money in litigations can be avoided if the
system does not infringe on any copyright laws.
Commercial Product Portfolio of the attributes of the system and competitors system
should be kept and according to John Stark (2005) “The lifetime of some products is
now so short, that the development of a future generation has to start before the
development of the previous generation has been finished.“
Reference

Blackstone, J.H., Capacity Management, South-Western Publishing, Cincinnati, OH,

1989

Davenport, T.H. and Short, J.E. (1990), “The new industrial engineering: information
technology and business process design”, Sloan Management Review, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp.
11-27.

Huertas-García, Rubén; Consolación-Segura, “A framework for designing

new products and services “Carolina. International Journal of Market Research, 2009,
Vol. 51 Issue 6, p819-840

Rindova, V.P. & Petkova, A.P. (2007) “When is a new thing a good thing? Technological
change, product form design, and perceptions of value for product innovations”
Organization Science, 18(2), pp. 217–232.

Stark, J (2005) „Product lifecycle management: 21st century paradigm for product
realisation‟ Stark 2005 p3-4

WANG, P. and LIANG, M. (2005) “An integrated approach to tolerance synthesis,

process selection and machining parameter optimization problems” International
Journal of Production Research, Vol. 43, No. 11, 1 June 2005, 2237–2262