7Concept Selection
7. Concept Selection
Lai Chaoan
Concept Development Process
§The team faced with choosing the best concept for further design, refine, and production(7-2):
§How can the team choose the best concept, given that the designs are still quite abstract?（相当抽象，如何选择？）
§How can a decision be made that is embraced （赞成）by the whole team?
§How can desirable attributes of otherwise weak concepts be identified and used?
§How can the decision-making process be documented?
Concept Development Funnel
7.2 All Teams Use Some Method For
Choosing a Concept
The methods vary in their effectiveness and include the following:
?External decision:Concepts are turned over to the customer, client, or some external entity for selection.?Product champion（产品代表）:An influential team member chooses a concept based on personal preference（偏好）.
7.2 All Teams Use Some Method For
Choosing a Concept
?Intuition（直觉）: The concept is chosen by its feel. Explicit（外在的）criteria or trade-offs are not used; concept just seems better.?Multivoting（多数表决）
?Pros and cons（辩论、讨论利弊）
7.2 All Teams Use Some Method For
Choosing a Concept ?Prototype and test:The organization builds and tests prototypes of each concept, making a selection based upon test data.
?Decision matrices:The team rates (评估) each concept against prespecified（预先设定的）selection criteria, which may be weighed.(加权)
7.3 A Structured Method Offers Several
Benefits
A structured concept selection process helps to maintain objectivity (客观性) throughout the concept phase of the development process and guides the product development team through a critical (关键), difficult, and sometimes emotional (激动的) process: 1、A customer-focused product: concepts are evaluated against customer-oriented criteria;
2、A competitive design(竞争性设计): by benchmarking concepts with respect to existing designs;
3、Better product-process coordination(配合) : explicit evaluation of the product with respect to manufacturing criteria.
7.3 A Structured Method Offers
Several Benefits
4、Reduced time to product introduction: a structured method becomes a common language (通用语言) among design engineers, manufacturing engineers, industrial designers, marketers, and project managers
5、Effective group decision making(有效的小组决策): a structured method encourages decision making based on objective criteria (客观标准)
6、Documentation of the decision process(决策过程存档)
7.4 Overview of Methodology
We present a two-stage concept selection methodology.
1.The first stage is called concept screening.(概
念粗筛)——a quick, approximate evaluation
aimed at producing a few viable alternatives.
2.the second stage is called concept scoring. (概
念打分)——a more careful analysis of these
relatively few concepts in order to choose the
single concept most likely to lead to product
success.
7.4 Overview of Methodology
v Both stages, concept screening and concept scoring, follow a six-step process:
–Prepare the selection matrix.（准备选择矩阵）–Rate the concepts.（概念评估）
–Rank the concepts. （排列概念）
–Combine and improve the concepts.（组合和
优化）
–Select one or more concepts.（选择一个或多
个概念）
–Reflect on the results and the process.
Concept Selection Process ?Prepare the Matrix
–Criteria
–Reference Concept
–Weightings
?Rate Concepts
–Scale (+/-/0) or (1–5)
–Compare to Reference Concept or Values ?Rank Concepts
–Sum Weighted Scores
?Combine and Improve
–Remove Bad Features
–Combine Good Qualities
?Select Best Concept
–May Be More than One
–Beware of Average Concepts
?Reflect on the Process
–Continuous Improvement
7.5 Concept Screening
Concept screening
1.The purposes of this stage are to narrow the number of concepts quickly and to improve the concepts.
2.Concept screening is based on a method developed by the late（已故的）Stuart Pugh in the 1980’s and is often called Pugh concept selection
7.5 Concept Screening
Step 1: Prepare the Selection Matrix
§prepare the matrix
§Then entered the inputs (concepts and criteria) on the matrix.
1.Concepts: entered along top of the matrix, using graphical or textual labels of some kind.
2.selection criteria (选择标准) are listed along the left—hand side of the screening matrix, based on the customer needs as well as on the needs of the enterprise, such as low manufacturing cost or minimal risk of product liability.
3.Each criterion is given equal weight.
1.The team chooses a concept to become the benchmark, or references concept, against which all other concepts are rated.
The reference is generally either an industry standard or a straightforward (简单易懂的) concept with which the team members are very familiar.
2. Each criterion is given equal weight, therefore, do not put too much criterion into the table.
Step 2: Rate the Concepts
A relative score of “better than”(+), “same as”(0), or “worse than”(-) is placed in each cell of the matrix to represent upon how each concept in comparison to the reference relative to the particular criterion.
When available, objective（客观的）metrics can be used as the basis for rating a concept.
assembly cost: the number of parts
Ease of use: the number of operations
Absent objective metrics, ratings are established by team consensus . (secret ballot)
7.5 Concept Screening
Step 3: Rank the concepts
§After rating all the concepts, the team sums the number of “better than”, “same as”, and “worse than”scores
§ A net score can be calculated by subtracting the number of “worse than”ratings from the “better than”ratings.
§Once the summation is completed, the team rank-orders the concepts.