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In the early 1980s, engineers thought that massive research would be needed to speed up product development. As it turns out, less research is engineers to use available technology. Developing a revolutionary short steps is a safer and usually more successful approach to product development,
Shorter product development cycles are also beneficial in an engineering world in which both capital and labor are global. People who can design and manufacture various products can be found anywhere in the world, but containing a new idea is hard. Geographic distance is no longer a barrier to others finding out about your development six months into the process. If you’ve got a short development cycle, the situation is not catastrophic—as long as you maintain your lead. But if you’re in the midst of a six-year development process and a competitor gets wind of your work, the project could be in more serious trouble.
The idea that engineers need to create a new design to solve every problem is quickly becoming obsolete. The first step in the modern design process is to browse the Internet or other information systems to see if someone else has already designed a transmission.
In tacking such problems, the availability of high-powered personal computers and access to the information highway dramatically enhance the capability of the engineering team and its productivity. These information age tools can give the team access to massive databases of material properties, standards, technologies, and successful designs. Such pretested designs can be downloaded for direct use or quickly modified to meet specific needs. Remote manufacturing, in which product instructions are sent out over a network, is also possible. You could end up with a virtual company where you don’t have to see any hardware. When the product is completed, you can direct the manufacturer to drop-ship it to your customer. Periodic visits to the customer can be made to ensure that the product you designed is working according to the specifications. Although all of these developments won’t apply equally to every company, the potential is there.
Custom design used to be left to small companies. Big companies sneered at it—they hated the idea of dealing with niche markets or small-volume custom solutions. “Here is my product,” one of the big companies would say. “This is the best we can make it—you ought to like it. If you don’t, there’s smaller company down the street that will work on your problem.”
Today, nearly every market is a niche market, because customers are selective. If you ignore the potential for tailoring your product to specific customers’ needs, you will lose the major part of your market share—perhaps all of it. Since these niche markets are transient, your company needs to be in a position to respond to them quickly.
The emergence of niche markets and design on demand has altered the way engineers conduct research. Today, research is commonly directed toward solving particular problems. Although this situation is probably temporary, much uncommitted technology, developed at government expense or written off by major corporations, is available today at very low cost. Following modest modifications, such technology can often be used directly in product development, which allows many organizations to avoid the expense of an extensive research effort. Once the technology is free of major obstacles, the research effort can focus on overcoming the barriers to commercialization rather than on pursuing new and interesting, but undefined, alternatives.
When viewed in this perspective, engineering research must focus primarily on removing the barriers to rapid commercialization of known technologies. Much of this effort must address quality and reliability concerns, which are foremost in the mind of today’s consumers. Clearly, a reputation for poor quality is synonymous with bad business. Everything possible—including thorough inspection at the end of the manufacturing line and automatic replacement of defective products—must be done to assure that the customer receives a properly functioning product.