New Product Success - The Last in Our Series on the Six Pillars of the New Product Process

By David Clark, New Business Development Manager, the Malco Design & Deliver Group

This is the sixth and final installment on the importance of project pre-design preparation. If you missed a previous installment, please view back issues of the newsletter to read about pillars 1-5.

Our sixth pillar is quality.

Thousands of books have been written about quality, but the simple truth is there are three different types of quality that you need to have to be successful.

Quality of execution relates to how well your manufacturing plan and processes are executed. Was the assembly drawing followed correctly? Were the correct parts and materials used? Was the product properly inspected? Did your supplier meet your specifications? These are the types of questions related to quality of execution.

Quality of design can best be described by the statement, "excellent execution of a bad plan will still yield bad results." If your design did not take into account the needs and capabilities of the manufacturing process then no amount of skill on the part of the operator, no amount of inspection, and amount of training can fix the problem. Quality of design also relates to how well the design meets the intended use, and the expected abuse. Have you specified the right materials? Is there a safety factor built into the strength analysis? Have you specified the proper tolerances? These are the types of questions related to quality of design.

Meeting the needs of the customer is self explanatory. No matter how well a product is designed or made, it still needs to be the right product for the job. This quality really goes back to your market research and definition of customer requirements. You can have the best designed and manufactured slide rule ever made, but it is meaningless if the customer needs all the functionality of a computer.

Achieving Total Quality

To achieve success, all three types of quality must be considered and addressed.

• Failure to meet execution quality will yield quality problems that are visible to the customer.
• Failure to meet design quality will hurt your profitability
  and/or will reflect in the performance of your product.
• A failure to meet customer needs will make the product irrelevant.

Having the right product, with a quality design, and a well executed manufacturing plan is what really matters.

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Contact Us

For more information, please contact David Clark at David.Clark@MalcoD2group.com or toll free at 866-204-0148.

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