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A fun and thought provoking review of the general principles of product design and development, with an emphasis on practical tools and a ‘hands-on’ approach.
To include a free copy of the "Better Product Design" workbook.

Audience: Professionals involved in product development, including managers and engineers who want to take a fresh look at design practices.

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View an illustrated summary of this event.

Date

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3.00pm - 7.00 pm

• Introduction: What is good design?
  James Moultrie, University of Cambridge
  Good design combines a mix of hard and soft elements which provide benefits for both the customer and the producer.

• User-centred design: tools and techniques
  Dr Rachel Jones, Instrata Ltd
  An exploration of the application of user-centred design techniques, illustrated by a number of case studies.

• Product desirability: meanings and contexts
  Robert Holdway, Royal College of Art
  A product which is desirable in one market may be inappropriate in another - how does a product's visual meanings relate to the context of use?

• Designing for production: case study
  Arland Shawe-Taylor, Bosch Lawn and Garden Products
  An exploration of the benefits and challenges of pursuing a platform and modularity strategy, and experiences of using DFMA methods.

• Capturing value from innovation
  Pete Fraser, University of Cambridge
  Discussing ways in which successful companies profit from innovation, and exploring the trade-offs between time, spend, cost and performance.

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Date

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Monday 30 September 2002

Peterborough

• managing the innovation process
• capturing value from innovation
• understanding disruptive technology
• rekindling the innovative spark

How can companies improve the management of the innovation process? This workshop focuses on the choices companies make when developing and implementing their innovation strategy. Different approaches to innovation and new product introduction are reviewed and the regeneration of innovative capabilities in a 'mature' company is explored through a case study.

Monday 28 October 2002

Peterborough

• what is good design?
• assessing and improving your company's design capability
• choosing appropriate design tools

Well designed products are useful, easy to use, desirable, easy to make, profitable and clearly differentiated. This workshop looks at both the management and execution of product design activities. A rapid assessment tool is described which acts as a 'health check' for current products as well as the performance of 32 key design activities. The workshop will also discuss ways to improve design capability and tools that can be applied.

Monday 18 November 2002

Peterborough

• essential principles of design for manufacture
• impact of new products on production
• achieving a smooth ramp-up to volume

Companies often experience difficulties when bringing new products into production. Time-to- volume is often much longer than time-to-first-batch. This workshop summarises the essential principles of design for manufacture and assembly. It explores the impact of launching new products on the manufacturing operation and investigates ways to smooth the transition.

Monday 9 December 2002

Peterborough

• developing a collaboration strategy
• managing collaborative projects
• achieving collaborative ‘maturity’

Product development collaborations are an increasingly common way for companies to gain access to outside expertise and resources. However, such partnerships present many additional challenges. This workshop will explore the key issues in managing collaborative projects and will introduce tools for assessing the maturity of your collaboration process. Common problems are highlighted by a structured ‘walkthrough’ of the collaboration life-cycle.

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New technologies provide rich opportunities for the design and development of innovative new products, with substantial rewards awaiting successful companies. At the same time, innovation is becoming an increasingly distributed process involving networks of technology providers, designers, system integrators and manufacturing service providers. The challenge for today's companies is to adopt an appropriate innovation strategy to make the most of emerging technologies and markets.

For some large companies, this may require a conscious effort to reorganise for innovation to foster the kind of creative climate which is such a feature of specialist product design consultancies. Small companies can also become increasingly competitive armed with strongly protected intellectual property and access to the kind of specialised design and manufacturing services previously only found in large vertically integrated companies.

The Symposium will explore ways of organising for innovation to exploit these markets for technology and technological services, to accelerate technology integration and where appropriate, facilitate discontinuous technological change.

The programme is a mixture of keynote plenary presentation from leading international figures in technology and innovation management, case study sessions providing more opportunity to discuss particular company experiences in a more informal setting, and small group workshops which give access to some of the latest practical research findings.