Booth Associates - Research

Research and Development

Do You Recognize Any of These Situations in Your Company?

The following situations are common in the design and development areas of many organizations.

We need a method that will systematically guide us in developing products and services that will meet our customers’ needs.
After our new product is designed, it is important to verify that the designed product is capable of meeting our customers' needs.
How can we verify the design?
When we try to establish specifications for the products we are designing, we more or less just make our best guess. We wish we had something more concrete to base our specs on.

Here are some examples of how Booth Associates can help.

Design Methodology

The following is an example of how Booth Associates can save you money in the development and design areas of your company.

The Product Design Division of a manufacturer of electric toasters developed a new toaster with an automatic sensing device to avoid both under-toasting or over-toasting bread. After the design was virtually finished, the manufacturing managers were brought in and shown the new product. Their job was to produce the product as a cost that permitted a reasonable profit.

Manufacturing quickly discovered that several aspects of the product design were going to be difficult to manufacture. In fact, one aspect would so expensive to manufacture that it was doubtful whether a profit could be made on the toaster.

After the product had undergone re-design to make it more easily manufactured, extensive testing was done in the lab. This included use by untrained persons who represented potential buyers of the toaster. It was quickly discovered that two of the features were not at all intuitive and were causing considerable confusion on the part of the users. This required further re-design.

A comprehensive, thoroughly-tested method for designing the product would have eliminated the costly delays almost completely.

The entire design process could have been streamlined by using a step-by-step design approach that assures its adherence to customer needs/wants as well as to manufacturability.

Realistic Tolerances

The following is an example of how Booth Associates can save you money in the development and design areas of your company.

To attain the stated tolerances need in a new product required several components that were very expensive. This increased the cost of the production units. Furthermore, as the company was gearing up for production, it became evident that those tolerances could not be attained-- even with the expensive components.

After many futile attempts, the design team took another look at the required component tolerances. They found that they were considerably more stringent than what was needed to assure good, safe performance of the final product. It had not been known clearly how the variation of the components affected variation in the final product. Help was obtained by the design team to establish tolerances that were consistent with the true needs of the final product and with the inherent variation in the components.

Statistical tolerancing proved to be a powerful way to establish the needed tolerances in the components without adding unnecessary cost.

The inherent variation in a product must be known when setting specifications. Otherwise, unnecessary costs are incurred.

How Booth Associates Can Help

If you recognize any of these or have other problems in your company, we can help you. We have helped many companies improve their bottom line, and we’ll do the same for you. Please see our list of services and contact us.