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10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device
F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 1
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ............................................................................................. 3
Abbreviations .................................................................................... 4
Market trend ...................................................................................... 5
Other Challenges .............................................................................. 6
10 Easy Steps for Concept Selection ............................................... 7
Benefits of Implementing 10 Easy Steps for Concept Selection..... 12
Conclusion....................................................................................... 13
About the Authors ........................................................................... 14
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
3
Abstract
Organizations that consistently struggle to meet the planned project schedule and cost, simply cannot pinpoint the product designer on why things are not working as they should. The current development process may have an issue that needs to be evaluated. For a product designer, selecting the right concept out of multiple concepts will save a lot of time and project cost, and help organization to launch the product to market on time. In many projects cost and time lines exceed due to incorrect selection of the concepts. This usually ends up in poor quality products and rework. This paper provides easy 10 steps and some powerful techniques that would help you select the best out of the multiple concepts
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
4
Abbreviations
Sl. No. Acronyms (Page No.) Full form
1 CF (Page-7) Critical Factor
2 KT (Page-7) Knowledge
Transfer
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
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Market trend
Why should you revisit the current development process? What will happen if you do not have right process for concept selection?
Over the last few years, the time taken to market products is shrinking considerably when compared to past market development. This has forced companies to launch their own high-quality products in a short duration sustain their existing market and to improve their present level. Now-a-days, business has become heavily dependent on the launch of new product at the right time. Additionally, companies must meet customer expectations that are changing every day. On one side, the new product design and development investments are very high, and on the other side, the products get outdated very quickly due to various reasons. Now, most of the organizations have started design outsourcing to reduce timeline and project cost. However, complications have increased further due to the involvement of the multinational development team and different concept selection processes. Therefore, new product outsourcing trends need to implement a very successful concept selection process.
Design outsourcing
Multinational
development team
Product launch at right
time
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
6
Other Challenges
Additional challenges/questions that point the need of a good concept selection process for the designer are as follows:
Usually, in most of the projects, the concept generation and finalization phases not completed on time when compared to the detailed design phase.
Why do you face project escalation and customer dissatisfaction during the concept phase?
Why are projects terminated after the concept design phases?
Why are you missing the Water Fall approach in development phase?
Why is it that some projects are doing well while others are not?
Why do some selected concepts miss critical requirements of the customer?
How to involve customer or management team during the concept selection phase?
How to meet new or unknown customer expectations?
How to gain customer or management confidence and improve the customer relationship from beginning of the project?
There are several problems or challenges as these that are associated with the mishandling of concept phase in new product development project. If organizations consistently mishandle projects particularly during the initial phase of the project, the product launch and costing will be affected and the organization loses revenue. Fortunately, you have 10 steps for the best concept selection that can help your organization to increase the success rate.
How to select the best
concept?
- 10 simple steps with
useful tips and templates
Are you confused about
selecting the best
concept?
- 10 steps to help you select
the best concept
Are you spending a lot of
time and money to select
the best concept?
- 10 easy steps that could
save your cost and time
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
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10 Easy Steps for Concept Selection
For any new product development project, the concept design phase commences after the customer requirements are ready. During this phase, the project team will be formed and different concepts will be generated for evaluation. We have a unique template for the best concept selection that will help handle the concept phase to achieve best results.
Step 1: Determine Critical Factors (CF) for Concept Design
The concept generation process starts with preparation of the criteria or critical concept selection factors based on understanding customer‟s requirements with respect to the following aspects:
Critical to performance
Critical to usability
Critical to product cost
Critical to reliability
Critical to manufacturability and assembly
Critical to safety
Critical to regulatory This list can be customized based on the nature of products. For the selected criteria, define the evaluation methods on how to check the critical factors. These details will help the team to understand the complete expectation on the new concepts.
Step 2: Weightage Allocation and Concept Ranking Scale Definition for CF
Weightage allocation
The next step includes allocation of the weightage in the scale of 1-5 for each critical factor (CF). You must assign high weightage for the most important CF and low weightage for the least important CF. The best practice would involve the team to allocate weightage for each of these critical factors. Additionally, the client and other stake holders can also be involved in this exercise.
“Ranking on ideas”- Create a common understanding
Once the allocation of weightage for each CF is done, define how to rank each concept against these critical factors. The ranking score scale can include 1-5 range, similar to CF weightage scale.
Since the ranking exercise is a collective team effort, the detailed definition of ranking score scale is very important, to arrive at a common understanding among the team members.
10 Easy Steps
Identification of CF
Weightage allocation and
ranking on ideas
Establish Base concept
Team formation and KT
Generate Concepts
Concept Evaluation
Concept Ranking
Hybrid Solutions
Re evaluate
Selection and Sign-off
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
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The very important part of this exercise is to get the concurrence of both the team members and client on CF weightage and ranking score scale. The “weighted score” of each concept is arrived by multiplying these two parameters which will be finally used to rank the best concept.
Weighted score = CF scale x Ranking score
Another best practice is to involve the client team also in this process. This will help the team to gain confidence on the process of best concept selection. It will also ensure overall agreement on the best selected concept.
Step 3: Establish a Base Concept and Communicate
The main objective of this step is to demonstrate the basic understanding of the design requirements through a base concept. This would be a guideline/template for the team members to communicate the concepts. This could be in the form of:
Hand sketches,
Schematics,
Storyboard,
Process flow chart, and so on.
This step will ensure that each team member provides identical output formats. This will help reduce unnecessary rework during concept rating.
Step 4: Team Formation and Knowledge Transfer
Once the basic concept is ready and accepted by all stake holders, the team will be formed based on various skills required for the particular concept generation. The team composition will be arrived based on the nature of the product. The next activity is to transfer knowledge to the team. The knowledge transfer would pertain to the following areas which are to be addressed as part the new concepts:
Critical new product design requirements and its
applications
Demonstration of the basic concepts and expectations with respect to new concepts
Finalized critical factors for concept selection and rationale behind the allocated weightage
Concept rating scale definitions and rationale behind the allocated score
The best practice is to provide hardcopies of the critical requirements list and rating scale to the team along with concept
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
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review checklist to ensure 100% coverage of the design requirements in the new concept.
Step 5: Generate Concepts
Now team is ready for new concept generation. You can adapt the following methodologies:
Brain storming - Capture all ideas
Web search - Understand information on relevant patents, latest technologies and development, so on.
Study similar products in the market - Understand factors such as usability, customer expectation, and so on.
The project team also can develop its own methodologies to generate new concepts.
Step 6: Concept Evaluation
Before getting on to the concepts evaluation, it is proposed to filter or eliminate the ideas which are not potential for further concept evaluation. This activity could be done as team deliberations. If the number of concepts is not sufficient, then step 5 can be repeated to generate some more potential concepts. Once the required number of potential concepts is ready, the following activities can be performed for concept evaluation: 1. Ranking on ideas
Ranking of ideas is a team activity. Here, each potential concept is ranked on the scale of 1-5 based on the understanding of the detailed definition of ranking score. Generally, rank 1 represents Minimum and rank 5 represents Maximum. Higher the score, better the advantage (For more details, refer to step 2).
Best practices:
Get the same exercise carried out by the client team or
the management team separately.
Capture the understandings and assumptions made
while ranking concepts against each CF, which could
be discussed and agreed with the client team.
2. Concept Average weighted score calculation
During this stage, the individual weighted score for the each CF will be calculated automatically based on the ranking of each concept. Once it is done, the total average weighted score for a particular concept will be populated automatically.
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
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The same exercise will be performed for the rest of the concepts and the total average weighted score for each concept will be calculated.
Step 7: Concept Ranking
1. Concept Average Weighted Total Score- Team Review
Before concluding on the final average weighted total score for the each concept, it is proposed to have a team walkthrough along with the client on the outcome. This exercise will give a common understanding and acceptance among the team members about the concept ranking.
2. Select 2-3 best concepts based on weighted totals
Here, all the concepts will be ranked based on the total average weighted scores (Highest rank = Max average weighted score and Least rank = Min average weighted score). Once this is done, the first two or three highest ranked concepts will be considered for the next stage.
Step 8: Look for Hybrid Solutions
1. Prepare CF profile for the selected concepts
The purpose of this step is to highlight the ranking of each CF for all concepts that can be represented in a single chart. This can be done using a Web chart. This graphical representation will give a better understanding on performance of each of the concepts against each CF.
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
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2. Mix and match the best features of the selected concepts
Based on the Web chart representation, the best features among the concepts can be selected and implemented in the maximum ranked concepts. This will add more value to the concepts and may reduce the cost. The suggested feature information can be captured in the individual concept tab in the concept selection template.
3. Generate Hybrid Solutions
New concepts can be generated by using the best features of all concepts. These concepts can be evaluated based on the CF to address the advantages and disadvantages of combining the best features. This evaluation will be carried out in the next step.
Step 9: Re-evaluate Ideas
After implementing the suggested improvements on the concepts, the concepts can then be re-evaluated against the CF.
Step 10: Best Concept Selection and Sign-off
Based on the ranking, the highest ranked concepts can be selected for further development.
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
12
Benefits of Implementing 10 Easy Steps for Concept Selection
Enables the project team to complete their concept design phase successfully in every project
Improves the new product time to market success rate
Enhances the project team contribution and customer confidence during the concept design phase of the project
Enables systematic validation of concepts
Maximizes organization‟s value among competitors
Reduces project expense during concept design phase
Reduces organizational risks on the best concept selection for new products
Simplifies the concept selection process
Avoids reworks during the design implementation phase
Easily adaptable for any new product development process
All the generated concepts are documented in a single file that can be referred for future purpose
Acts as a visual communication tool for the evaluation
Product time to market
Avoid reworks in design
implementation
Documented in single file
Visual communication of
concepts
Easily adaptable
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
13
Conclusion
Over the years, HCL has developed some very good tools for the selection of concepts. These tools enable us to identify good concepts easily. Depending on the types of product, the selection process needs to be customized. It is imperative to develop a process based on the product type. With rich experience in developing products for different fields such as Aero and Medical Devices, and a range of products within the Medical Devices field such as Orthopedics and Diagnostics, HCL was able to implement a proper and easy way of selecting good concepts.
10 Easy Steps & Powerful Techniques to Select the Right Concept for your Medical Device | February 2011
© 2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.
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About the Authors
• Tamilnambi N A – has over 11 years of experience in new product design and development on electro mechanical products that include 4 years of medical product design. He has worked in Patient Monitoring VAVE project, Breast Biopsy Device development, and Cryo Ablation System development. He is a PMP certified professional.
• Sivaprakash S – has over 6 years of experience in new product design and development on electro- mechanical products including 2 years of medical product design. He has worked in Cryo Ablation System development and Nerve monitoring systems.
Hello, I’m from HCL’s Engineering and R&D Services. We enable technology led organizations to go to market with innovative products & solutions. We partner with our customers in building world class products & creating the associated solution delivery ecosystem to help build market leadership. Right now, 14500+ of us are developing engineering products, solutions and platforms across Aerospace and Defense, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Industrial Manufacturing, Medical Devices, Networking & Telecom, Office Automation, Semiconductor, Servers & Storage for our customers.
For more details contact eootb@hcl.com
Follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/hclers and our blog http://ers.hclblogs.com/
Visit our website http://www.hcltech.com/engineering-services/
About HCL
About HCL Technologies HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company, working with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. Since its inception into the global landscape after its IPO in 1999, HCL focuses on „transformational outsourcing‟, underlined by innovation and value creation, and offers integrated portfolio of services including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure management, engineering and R&D services and BPO. HCL leverages its extensive global offshore infrastructure and network of offices in 26 countries to provide holistic, multi-service delivery in key industry verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Consumer Services, Public Services and Healthcare. HCL takes pride in its philosophy of „Employee First‟ which empowers our 72,267 transformers to create a real value for the customers. HCL Technologies, along with its subsidiaries, had consolidated revenues of US$ 3.1 billion (Rs. 14,101 crores), as on 31
st
December 2010 (on LTM basis).For more information, please visit www.hcltech.com
About HCL Enterprise
HCL is a $5.5 billion leading global technology and IT enterprise comprising two companies listed in India - HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems. Founded in 1976, HCL is one of India's original IT garage start-ups. A pioneer of modern computing, HCL is a global transformational enterprise today. Its range of offerings includes product engineering, custom & package applications, BPO, IT infrastructure services, IT hardware, systems integration, and distribution of information and communications technology (ICT) products across a wide range of focused industry verticals. The HCL team consists of over 77,000 professionals of diverse nationalities, who operate from 29 countries including over 500 points of presence in India. HCL has partnerships with several leading Global 1000 firms, including leading IT and technology firms. For more information, please
visit www.hcl.com
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