Production
Design for X: Interdisciplinary Product Development
Designing the product development process (PDP) holistically with Design for Excellence (DfX)
Many products face internal criticism only shortly before they are ready for mass production: the assembly team identifies manufacturing challenges, the logistics team sees room for improvement, and the sales team calls for greater flexibility or lower costs. The result is time-consuming adjustments, higher development costs, and delays in market entry. With our product development consulting, we rely on Design for Excellence (DfX) to avoid such challenges early on. Through close collaboration between development, production, logistics, procurement, and sales, we lay the foundation from the very beginning for cost-effective, manufacturable, and market-ready products. This allows you to reduce the effort required for changes, shorten development times, and bring innovative products to market faster and more successfully.
Philipp Kappus
Senior Manager Production
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Holistic product development process
Optimal product development requires close, cross-departmental cooperation
Companies often face the challenge of making their product development innovative, efficient, cost-effective, 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 tailored to market and production requirements. Without a systematic approach, the potential for lean and targeted development remains untapped.
As part of our product development consulting services, we optimize your product development process by implementing proven methods such as simultaneous engineering and Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA). By conducting structured cost analyses from the very beginning and taking all production-related requirements into account, we ensure that your products are developed efficiently and cost-effectively. By providing training for your employees, we not only ensure that knowledge is retained over the long term, but also foster 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 methods for tracking product costs
- Consider systemic requirements for the manufacturing process holistically
- Ensure the success of development projects through targeted employee training
Your benefit:
- Clear structures and responsibilities throughout the entire product development process
- More cost-effective products, precisely tailored to the needs of your market
- Ensuring the involvement of all stakeholders from the early stages of development
- Shorter development times and greater agility in your processes.
- Less waste and fewer iterations through early expert involvement
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 mentality, inefficient coordination, and delays. As a result, functional departments often evaluate design decisions in isolation, leaving potential for optimization untapped and stifling innovation. The challenge is to facilitate agile, transparent, and interdisciplinary collaboration in order to design products that achieve the overall optimal solution.
Through our product development consulting services, we empower your company to establish an efficient and transparent product development process. Together, we also define roles and responsibilities, create structured processes, and provide appropriate templates. Through impartial facilitation, we promote objective decision-making and prevent individual interests from taking precedence. Our change management services support the introduction of new responsibilities to ensure sustainable change and enable agile, networked product development.
Our service packages:
- Define the roles and responsibilities required in the product development process
- Create templates and processes for a clear workflow
- Neutrally facilitate design decisions and ensure fair, transparent evaluation
- Supporting change management for new roles and responsibilities
Your benefit:
- Clear structures and responsibilities for an efficient and focused approach to work
- Agile, transparent product development without silo mentality, with true teamwork
- Better product decisions through combined expertise
- Maximum internal buy-in and strong implementation through shared product visions
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.
Our product development consulting services help you systematically identify, evaluate, and transparently document requirements. Through internal workshops and targeted market research, we also validate these requirements and derive realistic development goals. Using methods such as Design for Function and Design to Schedule, we structure the requirements so that your development process runs efficiently and the final product meets market demands.
Our service packages:
- Systematically record product requirements and document them clearly
- Validate requirements through internal workshops and market research
- Negotiate and prioritize product requirements to establish 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:
- A Clear and Robust Set of Requirements for Your Product Development
- Early transparency regarding priorities and conflicting goals
- Greater market and customer focus for your products
- Ensuring that products are functional and can be manufactured cost-effectively
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 foundation for generating ideas and developing concepts. Through targeted workshops and methods, our product development consulting services not only foster creative thinking but also support the transition from an idea to one or more concepts. Guided reverse engineering further enables us to derive valuable insights from existing solutions for your own product. The goal is to transform the collected ideas into clearly structured concepts that are both consistently 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 with 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:
- Greater innovation through ideas generated across all areas of the company
- Greater transparency and comparability of alternative concepts
- A faster transition from an idea to a viable concept
- Avoiding unnecessary development work and saving time and resources in R&D
- Documented decisions through transparent and consistent evaluation of proposals
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.
As part of our product development consultancy, 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 methods for tracking production costs
- Developing cost-effective solutions and concepts with design to cost
- Use systematic competitive analyses to identify best practices, such as reverse engineering
- Critically examine the cost-benefit effect of product options
Your benefit:
- Significant reduction in product costs while increasing margins
- Achieving cost targets for individual product variants and entire product lines
- Maximum cost transparency through reliable, data-driven decision-making
- Reduced development effort through the adoption of proven market standards
- A Clear Structure in Your Product Portfolio for Greater Focus and Cost-Effectiveness
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 overlooked. 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 centralized, transparent decision-making structure, there is therefore a risk of inefficient development processes and missed goals.
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 all those involved support the decisions.
Our service packages:
- Establish a central body for comprehensive 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:
- No recurring discussions thanks to clear decision-making structures
- High transparency and traceability of key product decisions
- 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 ubiquitous and can lead not only to inefficient processes but also to high inventory levels and unnecessary costs. Product variety, individual customizations, and exceeding requirements make economical manufacturing difficult and lead to special processes in production and logistics . Without targeted standardization and modularization , the potential for economies of scale and cost reductions remains untapped.
We help you reduce 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 lower costs across your product portfolio, reduce parts diversity, and benefit from optimized procurement and inventory management.
Our service packages:
- Mastering product complexity through structured variant management
- Bundle option packages in a targeted manner to reduce internal complexity
- Define cross-product interfaces and standards for modularization
- Standardize components in the product portfolio through methodical guidance
Your benefit:
- Reduced product complexity in the standard system without special processes
- Sustainable reduction in product costs across the entire portfolio
- Fewer different parts, resulting in reduced costs for purchasing and warehousing
- Modular product structures with reusable components across the entire portfolio
