Transcript

Welcome to the last lecture of second week. I have discussed the Product characteristics in the previous lecture. So, next is how do we find a or how do we launch a successful product in the market. There are certain factors that are important for the product to be successful, to find a market place, to deal with the customers and to also counter or compete with the present competitors. So developing successful products, let us recall the product development: In agriculture industry, successful enterprises constantly percolate in a state of innovation in terms of products manufactures; new products are frequently introduced or improving and modifying the existing products as desired by the customers. So the current product is an innovation, in addition to that a new product forms. So this course that we are right now working on is about designing a new product and also improvising or improving the present product while adding some innovation to it. This is a new product. The current product has some innovation you can definitely commercialized your product if you have something worth for the customers. The complete process of conceptualizing a product and designing, producing and selling is known as a comprehensive and generalized process that is known as Product development.

A successful product development process produces a product that sells well and makes a healthy profit. So, it has to be high quality and low cost. So the cost has to be lower, this is already discussed. The cost of producing and developing both cost are to be included and I have discussed a fixed cost, variable cost, the oral product has to be acceptable by the customer depending upon the class for which we are launching. And the quality has to be there that is the worth of the product and time, time to the market, time to market is while assessing the need of the product and employing the whole design thinking and development process and developing the prototyping, testing that and finally launching the product. This time has to be very less so that the competitors are not able to make in that time. So this time is also important. If you take years to develop a simple product the competitors obviously will take the lead. And Technical know- how is following the proper procedure. So, I would like to introduce one term here value, Value is worth per unit cost. If the worth is higher, the quality is higher a person could be able to give high cost for your product. And if the worth is lower the customer would give low cost for your product. As we took the example in the cost characteristics of the product. The kind of the customer segment we are targeting and the kind of the class of the product we are producing, are we trying to produce the elite quality product or we trying to produce the medium quality product and trying to reach the more customers base so, that is important. Because in the next week we are gone to start on design thinking process, which the 5 steps in design thinking that we introduced in the first lecture of this course starting from empathy study that would be discussed by Prof. Ramkumar. Those 5 steps will take in the excessive weeks to explain them in detail and finally we will have the fun prototype coming out of those. Before, that I would like to discuss how the product is successful in the market, what are the various aspects, which one should ignore.

Number one is Market Study – The Distinctiveness: Excellent value is provided for the money spent, Enhanced quality perceived, and product should have unique features and meet the customer’s needs. By, this we mean to say that more features than the competitors. The customer focus and market orientation, so the customer is always focus throughout the design process if we need to commercialized the product and we need to sell our product in the market we need to have the market base there. So, in that case in design, development, prototyping, testing and in final marketing all the time what is the need of the customer that we have identified in the empathy phase only that is kept in our mind. So, one has to be mindful all the time for this. In intensive understanding of trait of market is developed, competition is recognized. In relationship between the product attributes and the user is developed, this we will discuss when we will discuss about translating customer needs. It is Quality Function Deployment (QFD). Quality Function Deployment we will discuss how to translate the needs of the customers into the design requirements. So when we are talking about market study, this is a Research Triangle that brings all the parameters which are required for a market study to launch on a product properly. We need to have proper preparedness and Sharp and early product definition has to be there. So for that what need to do Market Research Usability and User Research and Expert Design practice go hand in hand. Usability and User Research is the user interface and user experience. So, in this case all this three parameters interact with each other and provide an information to each other and the designer is here. This is the designer. So, when we design the product we need to have information regarding the customer, what user interface they are going to have, what are the experience that the user is having from previously. For Preparedness research before designing the product is important, market research has to happen and for sharpen early product definition the concept outline the framework of the product concept has to be there. The product features, the major features, the broader features, are to be given. The market attributes, what are the competitors those who all are building the same kind of product. Then business strategy outline has to be there. So in market study, in preparedness the success of the product is determined by the work preceding the actual product design, market research, technical assessment of the capability and the requirements and financial analysis, the technical analysis would come later but financial analysis has to be done here, the capital is needed, the source is needed, the production sales, the budgeting, from where would the funds come so what would be the total fund in marketing, how will we distribute our budget. So those things are planned here only.

So sharp and early product definition: Benefits to be provided and an outline of the concept. A list of product features and attributes, ranked in order “essential” and “desirable”. What is essential this we can’t ignore, this may be eliminated. May be eliminated if I couldn’t say may be ignored if the cost is rising very high. So attributes of the market like size of the market, demographic of the market, any description of the potential users, the business strategy outline, all those things come here in the market study.

Next factor after the Marketing or Market study is team work. The product development process couldn’t be possible or is not possible without the help, or without the work done by different streams, different people, and different people from the production, from marketing, from finance, from design, all the people have to come together to work as a team and finally launch the product. The product has to find the market and the farmers o workers would be able to like and understand the need of the implement that we have try to innovate here. So, the team work has people from marketing, sales, engineering, procurement, and manufacturing. A collaborative concept generation is there so this is a design team. A design team has several ideas. As, I said the ideas are always there but not many of them are finally producible. So the ideas are kept in a pool. A lot of ideas are kept in a pool so these can be taken in future as well if not taken in the current status. So the execution of the activity and Project selection is the major part.

When we talk about a team, execution of the activity – A better job is done across the activities identified under homework and market orientation by product development teams. Market study’s are not skipped by this teams, they undertake the trials sales using test market to see how the equipments that we have manufactured would be used by the users. I remember one of the cases, one of the student who work in a course project, he develop or he actually worked on the repair of the reaper. This reaper when they went to the developer or the manufacturer of the reaper who was working on that so they find a problem that the shaft of the reaper was deteriorating to early. So what they did, they made a collaboration with a close farmer. The reaper that they develop the farmer close to them used to test that reaper than they later launched it after it is finally be related. So these kinds of tests are always possible.

So project selection – the valuable resources are scattered among many candidate projects due to involvement of multiple projects. However, the materialization of all the projects is not possible but the choice of projects is narrowed down to project selection so that resources may be directed to the projects which are more likely to succeed and become profitable so, the most potential products which can be having the direct use or direct use of the customers those are taken first.

Now, the role of top management also comes in the team. The functional organization and project organization is different. In a functional organization the functional managers control their own function. This is the production manager, this is the finance manager, this is the design manager. But in a project these managers work in team so the team present people from the finance, production and design all come together to work as team to work on different products. So this is product 1, product 2, product 3. The kind of an organization is like this. So the top management has the primary role to support the product development team and provide it with the necessary resources. The lack of time, money, human resources, these are the main causes of failure and the management must realize that. The strategy for the business must be clearly articulated by the top management as it pertains to the development of the new product.

Next is promote – this be mindful that I am talking about the factors other than the process. The Design thinking process we will definitely discuss in the forth coming weeks. The process has to be followed in that pattern only, other than that what are the key factors that we are discussing in this lecture. So, after the market study and teamwork an important factor is promoting. The first market study was the identifying the need of the customer, need of the farmer, of the worker, of the people who are working in the gardens, people working in the farms. Now, we need to promote the product that we have developed. For that the kind of collaboration, that is said the kind of the internal customers, the customers who are close to our location they can be used for test runs and finally, if they find our product very good they can also purchase our product. We need to promote our product telling the world you have a good product. So legitimate promotion of the product is important. For this, various we see various ways, online ways are there, (12:34) you can also have hard copy online recourses and all those ways are important for this promotion. Launching new product with adequate allocation of the resources for marketing and appropriate forums are also ways where we can launch our product. The professional staff must support the launch and marketing efforts that can troubleshoot and service the product from (12:54) So, after sales… services is also important, if I say promote, after sales services. Because product that we develop also need to provide them a brochure for the operations of the product and also we need to give them some service for some time may be six months service or may be a year also.

Next is Quality. Quality – obviously has to be important component when we talk about the successful product. Speed without compromising quality is an important point that I m trying to discuss here because speed or the time to finally make the product reach the customer is important. So in the bottom line the determinant of profitability is the quickness with which the product makes it to the market. If it means compromising the product quality or the quality of executing the essential activities, then the advantage of speed is lost. So, speed is important also quality has to be part of that. Next, important factor is Demand. This is the last factor I like to discuss here. The growth of the market is rapid, the economic climate of the market is pro product (positive). The market demand is not cyclic or it is unstable for the new product. The customers are receptive to adopting the new products typically, young customers and can easily adopt in their life style, because the products that are coming these days in the market are technologically highly advanced for the people who are working on this one kind of product for years like for take an example of crop duster. Crop duster is an aircraft that is used to spray pesticides or to water the crops for the farm very quickly. So in that aircraft the pay load is there, water is kept there, pesticide is kept there, that can spray. But the crop duster has to have hangers for its launching, it has to have run ways, lot of things are there. Now we have drones. Drones we can just fly it from just our ground, any kind of ground we can fly from we need not to have run ways for that. And drones we have at IIT Kanpur at UAV (Unmelt arial vehicle) that can carry payload, payload is the weight that can carry upyo 8 kgs. So, new techological developments are happening which youngsters are very much willing to employ in their practice. So the demand is not cyclic but people are definitely ready to purchase new products so this is the product lifecycle. The product at introduction few people will purchase, the growth would happen at some point then product will mature and at this pint of time other product will take its place and the product sale would decline. So this is a general product cycle that is true for all kinds of product. This span can be lower or higher. This can be a few days or few weeks, or a few year or a few decades. But every product dies after some point of time or the sale decreases.

So, quickly, I just summarize Key features that I have discussed for a successful product. The product should have unique features, unique features could also have secondary features which is a multipurpose product or a multi functional product. The feature should entirely offer new benefits that existing products do not have or if the existing products do have they offer it at a very high price. So, the product should have market competition ready or should be market competition ready, so the product should be completely comparative to what is competitor offer. The quality management is higher, the understanding of demography of the customers is important, to harness contemporary societal trend is also there then economical product has to be there. The price of advantage should be given to the customer. With this week 2 is over now Professor will discuss the design thinking concept and I will also take the prototyping testing in the forth coming weeks.