Importance Of Product Selection And Design

Product selection and design

It refers to development and implementation of new product strategy or product in accordance with demands of marketplace with a competitive advantage. Competitive advantage can be developed via differentiation/low cost/rapid response or a combination of these.

Product selection- The effective strategy followed by big firms is to focus and concentrate only on few products. At times products have predictive life cycle and limited scope, so companies should always focus on incorporating new product designs.

For high success rate of new product design, a strong communication should be there between customer, product, processes and suppliers.

Product design strategy 1 is to build competence in customizing and established

For e.g.

In NIKE, ZARA etc. the design is focused on style. In MICHELIN or TESLA, the design is focused on application of technology. Sometimes design can be focused on packaging i.e. new container or new shapes of product packaging.

Product selection is important for an organization because it decides the impact and image of organization on its customers.

Shouldice hospital specialized in hernia- repair service and it was so effective that it can bring patients to normal living in 8 days in opposition to 2week time taken by others. Taco bell developed a low-cost strategy using product design. The product(menu) designed could serve all its products with a minimum no. of labors. The strategy was low on cost and high on value. Product life cycle refers to the total time for which product stays in the market. A product life cycle has 4 phases and different strategies are adopted to sail through those phases

Introduction phase products are prepared for market, they require expenditures for research, product development, process modification etc.

Growth phase the product starts stabilizing in market, effective forecasting of capacity requirements is of utmost

It also helps the management to identify the underperforming products and eliminate them.

Prerequisites for an organization to explore new product opportunities are open communication with customers, innovative culture, aggressive R&D team, strong leadership, formal incentives and training.:

Opportunities to be focused upon by a firm during new product development are:

Understanding customer- many commercial important products are sometimes made by lead users but not the producers. Operations manager should always be tuned in to these lead users.

Economic change- it refers to increasing level of wealth in long run but economic cycles and price change in short run. for e.g. a person may not be afford automobiles at present but can afford in future.

Demographic or sociological change- priorities of groups and family changes according to family size, income. This may affect market of automobiles use or buying of apartments.

Technological change- this change always carries a potential of market revolution and opportunity for a string of products to think of.

Political or legal change- these changes bring new tariffs, new trade agreements or