Product Development in India
Page Created By: Kaushik Sahu on 06/26/2000 at 09:08 AM
Category: CAPPD Lab
Software Capabilities for Enhancing Product Development Activities in India
(by Dr. Kaushik Sahu)
Introduction:
The focus in this article is on making the knowledge intensive tools for product development more user friendly. For instance, we will take the example of finite element analysis (FEA) packages used by the engineering departments of the Indian industry. These packages are based on the deep knowledge of the underlying physical principles. Thus, finite element analysis packages are knowledge-intensive tools that need the user to have domain specific knowledge for effectively solving problems. It is not easy for customers to absorb such tools. Software companies developing finite element analysis packages must, therefore, position themselves in a supply chain that is responsive to the diverse needs of the global customer.
The seven principles of SCM as listed by David L. Anderson, Frank E. Britt, and Donavon J. Favre (http://www.manufacturing.net/magazine/logistic/archives/1997/scmr/11princ.htm) can be also applied to the software companies doing global business. The first principle is to segment customers based on the service needs of distinct groups and adapt the supply chain to serve these segments profitably. Part of this adaptation would require mass-customizing the product to cater to the needs of these individual segments. This I believe can be achieved with the help of "Human-aided Intelligent FEA tutors" which can rapidly differentiate the product closer to the customer thereby catering to the needs of the globally segmented markets. For this, one needs to develop and integrate the appropriate feedback mechanisms for listening to the voice of the customer. For us the customer is the Indian Industry.
What Indian Industry needs?
The Indian industry was protected for the last 50 years. Our Industrial designs were mostly based on borrowed technology, which hardly left any room for re-design. Product innovation, as a competitive strategy, was being hardly pursued in a protected economy where demand far exceeded the supply. Product design was therefore an alien concept and the design function was relegated mostly to the back-room offices. Engineers working mostly in the Govt./Public Undertakings were finding field jobs more lucrative (and challenging) than the engineers assigned to design offices. Postings in the design departments were considered as "punishment" jobs/postings.
Now with the economy opening up the industry is faced with world class competition. Organizational changes are inevitable to retain customers who are finding better alternatives in a market that has suddenly gone global. Organizations are at a problematic transition phase where the work-culture needs to be transformed from a somewhat reactive orientation to a more proactive culture. Unfortunately, the Indian industry (mostly the Public sector) has been extremely slow in realizing the urgency of this need to change. With reference to our context on product design and development, concurrent engineering practices (as pursued by World Class Manufacturers) impose a lot of proactive involvement by bringing all downstream concerns up-front. Similarly, building robust designs is a highly proactive function that needs a rather radical change in most of these organizations. Resistance to such changes may not be easy to handle. This resistance becomes even more intense if the computer-based tool that supports product design is found to be user-unfriendly.
Research has progressed in enhancing the intelligence of the design tools to a large extent. However, we in India have not yet been able to realize these benefits. Our country has been the dumping ground of obsolete technology from developed nations. With them now realizing the enormous market potential of Asian countries like India, the rate of dumping has also increased. This has resulted in our people being faced with products having really short useful life cycles. Before one gets acquainted with a certain product a new one is introduced in the market. Hence our people are forced to move from older models to newer models without realizing the maximum benefits of any one of them. For instance, we have offices acquiring Pentium processors without having their people realize the full potential of the 286s, 386s and the 486s. This fast rate of change, coupled with attitudinal barriers, bring in a certain cultural resistance. This is because of the fact that there is a natural reluctance and inability to learn about and use new products. This is true of any emerging hard or soft technology.
The same is also true of the class of software products used by our designers. Even though the design software has evolved over the years, our industry has not been able to take the full advantage of the promises of CAD tools. We are still awed by the ancient drafting (not design) tools. Even if there is a slightly improved design tool available we under-utilize it in terms of its capabilities. Nor do we find our industry aggressively adopting product innovation as a major competitive strategy. Naturally therefore we are not facing any pressures to research and develop appropriate design tools for new product development in India.
The point I am trying to make here is that we should be focusing on the development and use of intelligent design tools and not mere drafting tools. A good and intelligent design tool fosters concurreny. Concurreny helps in reducing the lead time thereby making the manufacturing organization competitive. Manufacturing is the heart of any country -- and India is no different. With globalization and liberalization the Indian Industry is faced with the problems of being competitive in the global arena. Unless we gear up for this challenge now, we lose. Our industry needs to be innovative. Product innovation is the need of the hour. For this, we need to exploit the full potential of the available design tools and, if necessary, we have to indigenously develop our own design tools. The fastest and effective way to indigenously develop is to customize the available design and engineering analysis tools to think intelligently.
What the CAE software developer needs to do?
As a more contextual example, let us take organizations where the early part of the product development cycle goes through the sequential process of concept design to detail design through engineering analysis to manufacturing. This sequential process consumes a lot of time. Further, with lack of in-house expertise in CAE analysis coupled with mounting deadline pressures, many of these organizations fail to validate their designs. In that case, analysis is considered as a cumbersome process that poses a major hurdle in the race to market.
How does this affect the supplier of such CAE software? As suppliers of FEM software, for example, we approach such organizations with an assumption (NOTE: As we discussed earlier this assumption is far removed from the existing reality) that they have a design department that is actively pursuing the development of new products as a strategy to counter competition. We feel that they would need our deep knowledge-based simulation tools to validate their designs. We also expect the designer to be having a fair amount of knowledge both in the application domain and also in his/her understanding of finite element packages that he/she has to learn to use (such as NISA, ANSYS, MOLDFLOW and so on). But the fact is that many of these personnel are not proficient with such tools which leads to some frustrating experience and eventually they start quarreling with these tools. This frustration then leads to the de-marketing of such tools. This affects growth.
Training people in the use of such packages is perhaps one way of earning revenue for the company. However, that alone is not sufficient as it does not guarantee long term sustainable growth. Effective and customized training is more essential than a "general product exposure" kind of training. For such customization, however, the organizational resources are scarce. Keeping all this in view, what is needed is a more user-friendly front-end knowledge-based support to enhance the intelligence of the existing CAD tools for catering to the needs of a market that is just opening up. The domestic industries operating in this market need CAD/CAE tools to come up with products at a much faster rate than their competitors. This seamless integration of the design and analysis modules would then make the use of such FE packages more effective and also help guide the design process right from the concept design stage.
Several commercially available CAE software products claim to have seamless interfaces with 3D CAD packages. However, do they have an Analysis Expert that would provide the less experienced Indian user to quickly analyze the various design alternatives that are generated in the Conceptual Design Space? Such expert guidance will be needed especially when the user/designer would want to give vent to his creativity by using one of the CAD tools. I think, in India, these vendors need to position their CAE software more as a tool to guide product development rather than projecting it as yet another software for engineering system validation. For this, if necessary, they may have to develop even more user-friendly front-end capabilities right at the concept design stage. This can to some extent be done perhaps by further refining the interfaces. That would help the product designer (who need not be a domain expert) develop designs that are more robust, without inhibiting his creativity. He can thereby come up with more innovative ideas that can be quickly translated into reality. This will also help the Indian industry at a time when it is over-awed with the challenges posed by the rapid pace of modernization.
Original: July 1999