Design for X


Design for excellence is a term and abbreviation used interchangeably in the existing literature, where the X in design for X is a variable which can have one of many possible values. In many fields X may represent several traits or features including: manufacturability, power, variability, cost, yield, or reliability. This gives rise to the terms design for manufacturability, design for inspection, design for variability, design for cost. Similarly, other disciplines may associate other traits, attributes, or objectives for X.
Under the label design for X, a wide set of specific design guidelines are summarized. Each design guideline addresses a given issue that is caused by, or affects the traits of, a product. The design guidelines usually propose an approach and corresponding methods that may help to generate and apply technical knowledge to control, improve, or even invent particular traits of a product. From a knowledge-based view, the design guideline represents an explicit form of procedural or knowing-how-to knowledge. However, two problems are prevalent. First, this explicit knowledge were transformed from a tacit form of knowledge. Thus, it is not granted that a freshman or someone who is outside the subject area will comprehend this generated explicit knowledge. This is because it still contains embedded fractions of knowledge or respectively include non-obvious assumptions, also called context-dependency. Second, the traits of a product are likely to exceed the knowledge base of one human. There exists a wide range of specialized fields of engineering, and considering the whole life cycle of a product will require non-engineering expertise. For this purpose, examples of design guidelines are listed in the following.

Rules, guidelines, and methodologies along the product life cycle

DfX methodologies address different issues that may occur in one or more phase of a product life cycle:
  • Development phase
  • Production phase
  • Use phase
  • Disposal phase
Each phase is explained with two dichotomous categories of tangible products to show differences in prioritizing design issues in certain product life cycle phases:
Non-durables that are consumed physically when used, e.g. chocolate or lubricants, are not discussed. There also exist a wide range of other classifications because products are either goods, service, or both. Thus, one can also refer to whole product, augmented product, or extended product. Also the business unit strategy of a firm are ignored, even though it significantly influences priority-setting in design.

Development phase

Production-operations phase

Design rules

Design to cost and design to standards serves cost reduction in production operations, or respectively supply chain operations. Except for luxury goods or brands parts or components or assemblies of the product and b) the manufacturing equipment and the logistical material flow systems can be changed, and thus cost reducing effects in operating the latter may be achieved.

Design guidelines

Use phase

Comparison: consumer durables vs. capital goods

User focused design guidelines may be associated with consumer durables, and after-sales focused design guidelines may be more important for capital goods. However, in case of capital goods design for ergonomics is needed to ensure clarity, simplicity, and safety between the human-machine interface. The intent is to avoid shop-accidents as well as to ensure efficient work flows. Also design for aesthetics has become more and more important for capital goods in recent years. In business-to-business markets, capital goods are usually ordered, or respectively business transaction are initiated, at industrial trade fairs. The functional traits of capital goods in technical terms are assumed generally as fulfilled across all exhibiting competitors. Therefore, a purchaser may be subliminally influenced by the aesthetics of a capital good when it comes to a purchasing decision. For consumer durables the aspect of after sales highly depends on the business unit's strategy in terms of service offerings, therefore generally statements are not possible to formulate.

Disposal phase

Similar concepts in product development

Several other concepts in product development and new product development are very closely related:Engineering Design: Design for XTime dimension: product life cycle, Product Life Cycle Engineering, product life cycle management. Primarily, the unit of analysis here is a product, or more clearly, one itemMeso-level organisation: concurrent engineering, simultaneous engineering, and overlapping-parallel product development processesMicro-level organisation: cross-functional teams, inter-disciplinary teams, etc.
Looking at all life stages of a product is essential for design for X, otherwise the X may be suboptimized, or make no sense. When asking what competencies are required for analysing situations that may occur along the life of a product, it becomes clear that several departmental functions are required. An historical assumption is that new product development is conducted in a departmental-stage process, i.e., new product development activities are closely associated with certain department of a firm. At the start of the 1990s, the concept of concurrent engineering gained popularity to overcome dysfunctions of departmental stage processes. Concurrent engineering postulates that several departments must work closely together for certain new product development activities. The logical consequence was the emergence of the organisational mechanism of cross-functional teams. For example, Filippini et al. found evidence that overlapping product development processes only accelerate new product development projects if these are executed by a cross-functional team, vice versa.