Production
Design for X: Interdisciplinary product development
Designing the product development process (PDP) holistically with Design for Excellence (DfX)
When your development department designs new products and they are manufactured as prototypes or pilot series for the first time, criticism often comes from different departments. Assembly criticizes the ease of assembly, Logistics criticizes the packaging, and Sales sees potential for optimizing configuration options or product costs. Development responds with extensive revisions – which delays market entry and increases costs.
With Design for X (DfX), or Design for Excellence, we optimize your product development holistically and agilely. We create an organizational structure that ensures that the end product forms the best possible interaction between the requirements of development, production, logistics, suppliers and customers. Through simultaneous engineering, we evaluate concepts at an early interdisciplinary stage, minimize subsequent adjustments and ensure cost and functional targets. Our customized methodology adapts to your specific product and production requirements – for more efficient development and faster market entry. Rothbaum: Your consultancy for product development!
Philipp Kappus
Production Manager
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Are you facing a development assignment and want to enable and ensure holistic and successful product development? We would be happy to advise you! Send me your message and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
Holistic product development process
Optimal product development requires close, cross-departmental cooperation
Companies are often faced with the challenge of making their product development innovative, efficient, cost-sensitive and market-oriented. A lack of coordination between departments, unclear processes and delayed cost analyses lead to long development times and products that are not optimally aligned with market and production requirements. Without a systematic approach, the potential for lean and targeted development remains untapped.
We optimize your product development process by introducing proven methods such as simultaneous engineering and Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA). With the help of structured cost analyses right from the start and the consideration of all production-relevant requirements, we ensure that your products are developed efficiently and economically. By training your employees, we embed knowledge in a sustainable way, promote interdisciplinary collaboration and increase agility in product development.
Our service packages:
- Develop and optimize a company-specific product development process (PEP)
- Introducing simultaneous engineering and Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) in a targeted manner
- Implement methodologies for tracking product costs from the start of the development phase
- Consider systemic requirements for the manufacturing process holistically
- Ensuring the success of development projects through targeted employee training
Your benefit:
- You benefit from clearly defined processes and unambiguous responsibilities in the product development process – for more structure and efficiency.
- You develop cost-effective products that are precisely tailored to the requirements of your market.
- They ensure that all internal and external stakeholders are involved at an early stage.
- You shorten your development times and at the same time increase the agility of your processes so that you can react more quickly and successfully to market changes.
- You reduce waste and unnecessary loops by integrating the know-how of your technical experts at an early stage.
Organizational skills
Enabling development for optimal, holistic product development
Do you lack clearly defined roles, efficient processes and structured collaboration in product development? Unclear responsibilities can lead to silo thinking, inefficient coordination and delays. Specialist departments often evaluate design decisions in isolation, leaving optimization potential unused and slowing down innovation. The challenge is to enable agile, transparent and interdisciplinary collaboration in order to design products that are optimized as a whole.
We enable your company to establish efficient and transparent product development. Together, we define roles and tasks, create structured processes and provide suitable templates. Through neutral moderation, we promote objective decisions and prevent individual interests. Our change management accompanies the introduction of new responsibilities in order to ensure sustainable changes and enable agile, networked product development.
Our service packages:
- Define required roles and tasks together
- Create templates and processes for a clear workflow
- Moderate design rounds neutrally and ensure a fair, transparent evaluation
- Support change management for new roles and responsibilities and ensure implementation
Your benefit:
- They create clear structures and responsibilities for efficient and targeted working methods.
- They enable agile, transparent product development without silo thinking, with real teamwork.
- You improve your products through the targeted use of interdisciplinary knowledge.
- You design products that represent the overall optimum for all departments in your company and thus ensure maximum internal acceptance and efficiency.
Specification and requirements definition
Creating optimal framework conditions for development projects through clear internal and external requirements
Unclear, contradictory or unvalidated requirements lead to conflicting goals, unnecessary revisions and inefficient processes in development projects. Requirements are often incompletely documented, not prioritized or defined without reference to the market – with the result that the final products are not developed to meet actual needs.
We support you in systematically recording, scrutinizing and transparently documenting requirements. In internal workshops and through targeted market research, we validate the requirements and derive realistic development goals. Using methods such as Design for Function and Design to Schedule, we structure the requirements in such a way that your development runs efficiently and the result meets the market requirements.
Our service packages:
- Systematically record product requirements and document them clearly
- Scrutinize and validate requirements through internal workshops and external market research
- Negotiate and prioritize product requirements to derive clear development goals
- Targeted avoidance of overfulfillment of individual requirements with Design for Function
- Structured preparation of requirements for efficient development with Design to Schedule
Your benefit:
- You define clear requirements for your new product as a solid basis for effective development.
- You create clarity about the priorities of your development goals at an early stage.
- You avoid conflicting goals right from the start of development.
- You develop products that precisely meet the requirements of your market.
- They ensure that your products not only work, but can also be produced efficiently.
Idea generation and concept development
Good ideas are available throughout the company and must be collected systematically
In your company, too, valuable ideas lie dormant in the minds of employees, but are lost due to a lack of structure or are not pursued for various reasons. There is often no systematic process for recording and evaluating creative approaches and transforming them into viable concepts. Without a clear methodology, there is a risk that ideas are not understood or not evaluated by all specialist departments, meaning that innovative potential remains untapped.
We create a structured basis for generating ideas and developing concepts. Through targeted workshops and methods, we promote creative thought processes and support the transfer of the idea into one or more concepts. Guided reverse engineering makes it possible to derive valuable insights from existing solutions for your own product. The aim is to transform the collected ideas into clearly structured concepts that are uniformly evaluated and transparently documented – for efficient and targeted product development.
Our service packages:
- Systematically record ideas and document their advantages and disadvantages
- Conduct ideation workshops using methods such as 5W, Walt Disney or Design Thinking
- Developing ideas in a structured manner and translating them into solutions in an assessable depth
- Provide methodologies for reverse engineering of comparable products
Your benefit:
- They generate a wide range of new ideas – specifically promoted and professionally moderated.
- You record and structure all existing ideas in your company.
- They systematically transform ideas into viable concepts.
- You avoid unnecessary development work and thus save time and resources in the R&D area.
- You evaluate your concepts in a standardized and comprehensible manner for well-founded and documented decisions.
Cost-benefit focus
Ensuring added value for the customer and keeping an eye on product costs
Are you faced with the challenge of developing innovative and customer-oriented products without losing sight of manufacturing costs? A lack of transparency about cost structures, inefficient design decisions and inadequate competitive analyses often lead to unnecessarily high production costs. Without a consistent consideration of costs and benefits, there is a risk of not meeting market requirements or reducing margins.
We develop a company-specific methodology to continuously monitor manufacturing costs throughout the product development process. With Design to Cost, we identify cost-effective solutions, while targeted competitive analyses through reverse engineering provide valuable best practices. In addition, we critically scrutinize option scopes for their actual customer benefit in order to strategically align your product portfolio and methodically reduce costs.
Our service packages:
- Implement company-specific methodologies for tracking manufacturing costs along the product development process
- Developing cost-effective solutions and concepts with design to cost
- Systematic competitive analyses – e.g. by means of reverse engineering – support
- Critically examine the cost-benefit effect of product options
Your benefit:
- You significantly reduce your product costs and thus increase your margin.
- You achieve your cost targets for individual product variants as well as for complete product lines.
- They calculate even complex products and options clearly and based on data for maximum cost transparency.
- You reduce development costs by adopting the proven best practices of your market competitors.
- You create a clear structure in your product portfolio for more focus and efficiency.
Transparent decisions
A good decision must be understood and supported by all decision-makers
In many companies, product decisions are made in isolated departments, which means that important perspectives are not taken into account. A lack of transparency and unclear decision-making processes lead to repeated discussions, delays and a lack of acceptance of the decisions made. Without a central, comprehensible decision-making structure, there is a risk of inefficient development processes and missed targets.
We create a transparent and comprehensible decision-making structure by establishing a central committee for product decisions. All relevant specialist departments are integrated into this committee, and decisions are derived in a structured manner, documented and prepared in a management-friendly manner. In this way, we avoid unnecessary discussions, ensure a clear direction of development and make sure that everyone involved supports the decisions.
Our service packages:
- Create a central committee for holistic product decisions
- Derive and document decisions in a comprehensible manner
- Ensure the involvement of all relevant specialist departments
- Prepare and communicate decisions in line with management requirements
Your benefit:
- You avoid duplicate discussions on topics that have already been decided.
- They make and document central product decisions transparently and comprehensibly for all those involved.
- You ensure the consistent achievement of your development goals.
Economies of scale and standardization
Control of the manufacturing process through internal standardization of external complexity
Increasing product complexity is omnipresent and can lead to inefficient processes, high stock levels and unnecessary costs. A wide range of variants, individual adaptations and overfulfilled requirements make economical production difficult and lead to special processes inproduction and logistics. Without targeted standardization and modularization, the potential for economies of scale and cost reductions remains untapped.
We support you in reducing internal complexity through systematic variant management using product mining and by focusing on product functions. With modular product architectures, defined standards and the standardization of components, we enable cost-efficient production without unnecessary special processes. This allows you to cut costs across all products, reduce the variety of parts and benefit from optimized procurement and warehousing.
Our service packages:
- Mastering product complexity through structured variant management
- Targeted bundling of option packages to reduce internal complexity
- Define cross-product interfaces and standards for modularization
- Standardize components in the product portfolio through methodical guidance
Your benefit:
- You can master the complexity of your products as standard – without any complex special processes.
- You reduce your product costs sustainably across the entire portfolio.
- You reduce your variety of parts and therefore also your purchasing costs and stock levels.
- You benefit from modular products with reusable components across the entire portfolio.
