Extended product design

In fact, as a Wall Street Journal article stated, manufacturers find themselves increasingly in the service sector. The article attributes the trend to manufacturers having to provide services because that is where the money is. Few products and services are commodities in the strictest sense. Features of the extended product can outweigh the importance of the base product, which customers can view as indistinguishable from competing brands. General Electric s former CEO, Jack Welch, also points to service development associated with hardware production as fundamental to his success at GE.  

In an ideal world, supply chain managers methodically monitor the product and process innovations coming their way. They then design a supply chain to incorporate each innovation. Or, in a slightly less ideal situation, the managers slot each innovation into the best-fit supply chain already in place in the company. 

However, many fall short of achieving either of these situations. In fact, base product and extended product management are likely to be in separate company functions. Base products might be the responsibility of R D, engineering, and manufacturing departments, while marketing and sales shape extended products. 

Most managers may also assume that every product innovation must fit existing supply chain processes. Inertia, existing hard-to-change information systems, the required behavior change, and functional barriers make it difficult to alter those processes. Everyone is used to how things work now plus expensive investments in systems, staff, and facilities may be needed to make needed changes for the new product. 

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Extended product design The necessity for features and services beyond the base, or physical, product Often driven by commoditization of the base product... 

Table 3.1 presents a working definition of each driver. Figure 3.1 models the connections among them. Innovation, in Figure 3.1, pushes the whole process forward, so we place it first in our sequence. Innovation is external to the supply chain system. It pushes supply chain participants to continuously improve their chains. The three drivers — Extended Product Design, Globalization, and Flexibility Imperative — shape the direction, scope, and form of products and services and the supply chains needed to deliver them. 

Figure 3.1 illustrates how product or process innovations feed the next SCM driver, extended product design. We introduced the idea behind extended products in Chapter 1. Our supply chain definition, also in Chapter 1, describes the supply chain as physical, information, financial, and knowledge flows for moving products and services from suppliers to end-users. This includes a lot of services, which accompany their base, or physical, products. 

Extended product design What nonmonetary benefits do we offer Time to market Avoided investment Areas of expertise ... 

Extended product design Supply chain design... 

Eastman Kodak has identified 10 core competencies and developed a process for their management and utilization within the company (29). Similarly, Eaton Corporation selected seven core technical competencies, ranked them in importance, assessed their importance vs the known state-of-the-art for the industry, and developed action plans to extend the life of each (30). Eaton subsequently found the company could bring to market products designed with proven building blocks, thus minimizing risk and the need for additional capital equipment. In addition, the competencies were found to be reservoirs of proprietary advantage that had not previously been put to work. 

The problems of change of scale result from extending the applications and research in CAPE to micro-and macroscales. As shown in Fig. 1, the activities of CAPE are no longer limited to mesoscale (unit operations and processing units). The research in microscale, in terms of dimensions of the object as well as duration of the phenomena, is characteristic of the activities in the field of product design. The CAPE activities in macroscale correspond to applications at the company, industry, or even global scale. 

While the Immediate benefit from such an understanding would be an extended production phase In batch fermentations, this knowledge should also be central In designing alternative whole-cell processes (e.g.. Immobilized cell reactors). In which keeping the enzymes "alive" In their native Intracellular micro-environment could be the optimal approach In the operational transition from a batch to a continuous process. 

In a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study spanning the years 1980-1990, 62% of all nosocomial infections were attributed to bacterial pathogens [3]. An undefined number are due to bacteria transferred by and from the hands and skin. Products such as preoperative skin preparations and surgical scrubs have been used in hospital settings for the reduction of nosocomial infections. Products designed for these uses rapidly and dramatically reduce the levels of resident bacteria on the hands or skin immediately prior to invasive surgical procedures. By definition, they should exhibit a persistent effect. Persistence is prolonged or extended antimicrobial activity which acts to prevent or inhibit the... 

The design review, a formal and documented review of a system design, is conducted by a committee of senior company personnel who are experienced in various pertinent aspects of product design, reliability, manufacturing, materials, stress analysis, human factors, safety, logistics, maintenance, and so on. Tlie design review extends over aU phases of product development, fiom conception to production. In each phase, previous work is u( ted, and the review is based on current information. 

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