International Journal of Applied Industrial Engineering

Volume 5 • Issue 1 • January-June 2018

A Study of Product Development

Engineering and Design
Reliability Concerns
Daniel Aikhuele, College of Engineering, Bells University of Technology, Ota, Nigeria

ABSTRACT

This article explores the evolution of product development engineering by providing an overview
of the different developmental stages from a historical perspective. Furthermore, design reliability
evaluation which is a key component of product development engineering processes is studied by
reflecting and providing guidance on how to sort and assess reliability information early at the product
design stage, as well as how to account for flexibility and expert’s attitudinal character (information),
which have been found critical in the assessment of engineering products reliability.

Keywords
Assessment of Root Cause of Failure, Design, Product Development Engineering, Reliability Information

1. INTRODUCTION

There is a growing emphasis by researchers, practitioners, and customers alike to enhance the product
development engineering assurance early at the design stages in order to support the launching of
new products (Chin et al., 2009). Product development engineering, which is about the process of
designing and developing new devices, system or assembly, such that can be produced as item(s) for
sale using some production manufacturing techniques. Entails activities which deal with, issues relating
to product ideation, design, reliability, quality, and cost, serviceability, manufacturing, testing, and
assembling of new products, for the purpose of making the resulting product attractive to its intended
market. It involves a series of processes and strategies ranging from the understanding of the current
market trends (Mihaela et al., 2010), understanding customers’ requirements and expectations (Li
et al., 2012; Saeed et al., 2013), the systematic approach to the design of new product (Sydenham,
2003), the cost implication of new products design and development. The generation and evaluation
of new product design ideas (Aikhuele & Turan, 2017), managing the design and development
processes (Berends et al., 2011; Turner, 1985), satisfying the different engineering characteristics
for the product manufacturing processes (Gopalakrishnan & Pandiarajan, 1991; Perzyk & Meftah,
1998), decision-making in the product design process (Kemper et al., 2006) and the testing and sales
of the product (Fader, et al., 2003).
Product development engineering, which advocates for the building in of all relevant product
attributes during the early phase of new product development, has continued to receive a great deal
of attention from the research community over the past few years (Li et al., 2016). With so many
work on customers’ requirements and expectations (Hemetsberger & Godula, 2007; Junwu et al.,
2012; Li et al., 2012), the cost implication of new products designs (Chwastyk & Kołosowski, 2014;
Varadarajan, 2013), and the generation and evaluation of new product design ideas (Herring et al.,

DOI: 10.4018/IJAIE.2018010105

Copyright © 2018, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.


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2009; Kumar, et al., 2016). However, there are a number of challenging issues still open for research
in the product development engineering processes, among which are; (1) The difficulty, to effectively
evaluate the large number of solutions generated during the conceptual phase of new products (Tang,
1998). (2) Making effective decisions about new concept product designs in the means of conflicting
and interrelated attributes (Turan, 2013). (3) Representing and handling the incomplete, inconsistent,
and imprecise information’s that is typical of engineering design concept problems (Zeiler et al., 2007).
(4) Reliability issues at the early phase of product design and development (Sanchez & Pan, 2011)
and finally, (5) the consolidation of the large sources of reliability and design concept information
at the early product design stage (Meeker & Hong, 2014).
In order to successfully deliver profitable and high-quality products to the market, these challenges
must be holistically addressed and possibly reduced. In this paper, an attempt is made to address the
reliability issues at the early phase of product design and development by tracing the product reliability
challenges from a historical perspective using product development engineering evolutionary chart
which has been derived basically through an extensive literature review and a qualitative content
analysis method. The study contributes to the body of knowledge, by providing guidance on how to
sort and assess reliability information early at the product design stage, as well as how to account
for the reliability expert’s attitudinal character (information) in the assessment process, which has
been found critical in the assessment of product reliability at the early product design stage (Chen
et al., 2012; Merigó & Gil-Lafuente, 2010). Also, the study is beneficial to product development/
manufacturing companies as its findings can provide design and industrial practitioners with in-depth
understanding of reliability issues at the early product design phase.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents, details of the research method
adopted for the study, while the results which comprises of the product development engineering
evolution, the sources of reliability and design information for new product and the reliability of
concerns of new products at the early phase of product design are discussed in section 3. Finally,
some concluding remarks are presented In section 4.

2. MATERIAL AND METHOD

In addressing the objective of the paper, an extensive literature review approach and a qualitative
content analysis method have been adopted. Using the qualitative research procedure by Morse, et al.,
(2002), a purposive sampling approach is used for analyzing the contents of the literature review. The
sample size was based on the data collected. A purposeful sampling used in the qualitative content
analysis is mainly for the identification and selection of information related to the phenomenon of
interest (Morse, et al., 2002). Qualitative content analysis, unlike statistical analysis, does not measure
or quantify patterns; rather it is based on interpreting opinions and perspectives of various subjects.
Based on the insights from the literature on the product development engineering evolution,
four distinct product development engineering stages which encapsulate key reliability issues were
suggested as well as the Sources of product reliability and design information after carrying out the
qualitative content analysis which involves six HSE supervisors, eight university professors, and
two management personnel. The sample size was purposive and the best experts in the field were
contacted and interviewed using a semi-structured interview approach. The questions were about
the four distinct stages from the reviewed literature and the sources of product reliability and design
information. Permission was given by the participants to record their responses which were later
transcribed verbatim and then coded according to the content analysis method. To ensure accuracy and
to certify the data trustworthiness, the name of the participants were confidential, and authorization
was taken from the board of the equipment leasing association. For conformability and credibility,
the coded raw data were checked for accuracy of their meanings by two academic English experts.

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3. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

3.1. Product Development Engineering Evolution

As the business world increasingly recognize the potential of an effective and organized product
development engineering processes for the survival and growth of today’s business, the concept,
however, can be said to be changing. This is as a result of the increasing competition, globalization
and the eclectic approach to the development of today’s products. Hence, maintaining and improving
the productivity of product design has remained a paramount challenge for product design-driven
companies (Aikhuele, 2017; Hinckeldeyn et al., 2015).
The Product design-driven companies, which are characterized by the development of high degree
products and processes for the satisfaction of the ever-emerging customer requirements, struggles to
increase the productivity of their product design and processes due to the near lack of adequate and
effective method (Hinckeldeyn, et al., 2015). To systematically select an improvement approach/
method that accounts for the impact and interaction of productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency.
Over the past years, the product development and its engineering have evolved through a number of
stages. However, from a historical perspective, the following four distinct stages have been identified;
The Technology-driven stage, Market-driven stage, Information driven stage and the Knowledge/
Innovation driven stage as shown in Figure 1.

3.1.1. Technology-Driven Stage (The 1950s)

In this era, the development of new products were considered a “dawn nuisance” this is as a result of
the fact that one fifth of all the major new products launched, never generate significant profits for
the companies, rather they deplete the company’s resources and take away most of the managerial
time (Mayo, 2015). The product development did not follow any clear-cut procedure, there was no
rigidity in the application of sequence, also the companies appear to first develop their product in
the lab before thinking of the how to sell them (Olszewski, 1987). The development processes were
internally oriented, with little or no concern about neither the customer’s design requirements nor
the product reliability.
The product design and development companies in this era can be said to be more of product-
oriented than consumer-oriented in that era, consumers were eager to spend on new products but
were not satisfied with what was being offered as such retailers became restless when products did
not move off shelves as quickly as planned. However, this leads to more research on what actually
the customer wants.

3.1.2. Market-Driven Stage (The Late 1960s)

In this era, the product development evolved from the technology-driven stage into a market-led
process (i.e. shifting from internal orientation to external orientation) in which the new products
launched were based on a well-researched customer needs. The product development processes were
fully driven by the marketers who were close to the customer and knew their wants and needs. In
this era, so many organizational and conceptual marketing models were developed to increase the
efficiency of the product development process (Olszewski, 1987).

3.1.3. Information-Driven Stage (The Late 1980s)

This stage is regarded as the first stage towards today’s modern product development, it involves
the blending of the internal orientation of the technology-driven stage and the external orientation
of the market-driven stage plus a third force “Information”. This product development stage has
been achieved as a result of the realization and recognition by companies that product innovation is
a complex process that requires the internal inputs (research and development), the external inputs
(marketing expertise) that focus on customer’s needs, as well as the unifying force “Information” for

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survive and growth of today business. Information in this regard represents accuracy, accessibility,
and speed, which are key to an effective and efficient product development (Xiao, 2014).

3.1.4. Knowledge And Innovative Driven Stage (Early 2005)

This stage is regarded as the modern product development era, it involves the use of cloud sourcing
and open innovation to churn out new products and technologies to the market (Bergvall-Kåreborn
& Howcroft, 2013). Some of which ranges from energy and their management, agriculture, Heavy
duty machines, reduction of carbon gas emissions to Information Technology among others. Most
of the innovative firms have realised that there are better pool of innovative ideas and information
out there that is cheaper, effective and workable than the traditional internal product development
processes that have been found to be time-consuming and involve so many product and market tests
which may not even solve the market needs (Rubera, et al., 2016).
For product design-driven companies to fully achieve the goals of the present innovative-driven
era they must strive to adopt new methods and techniques, that; (1) support the product design from
the early concept stage, all through to the product obsolescence. (2) Ensure customer’s requirements
and expectations are fully met throughout the life of the product, with little life-cycle costs, using
proper cloud sourcing strategies and open innovation and finally. (3) Ensure all the product reliability
concerns and design information from the different sources are fully analyzed and the most appropriate
integrated into the final design.

3.2. Source of Reliability and Design Information for New Product Development
The most common source of product reliability and design information are in the failure occurrence
report (Sanchez, 2014), and design brainstorming section (King & Sivaloganathan, 1999). Since
during the early product design and development stage, there are no physical components that can
fail, and the future operational performance information of the design is scared. Hence, to build up
appropriate design reliability knowledge for the newly developed product, other sources of information
must be considered. In Table 1, some product reliability and design information sources have been

Figure 1. Product development evolution stages (Sources: Olszewski, 1987; Homan et al., 2003; Mayo, 2015)

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Table 1. Sources of product reliability and design information

Information Sources Description Method Type Uses

Existing predecessor Existing predecessor Most of the design Objective Assist in the design of
designs and historical products are assumed to and reliability new product and for
failure data share a similar design and information determining failures
failure structure. Hence, is captured in modes and causes, to
they are regarded as a vital databases, and their form the basis of the
information source for design retrieval depends new product design and
and reliability of the new mostly on the failure structure.
product. architecture of the
database.
Experts Opinion Design and reliability The most common Subjective Design concept and
information about a product methods for failure assessment
can be gained from Experts gathering design and for the new design
where they are able to give reliability judgments products.
insight on the risks that some from Experts are the
changes may bring about in elicitation methods
the new product. and the FMEA.
Customer Customer requirements and This is gained Subjective To set design and
requirements and expectations are another through customer reliability requirements
expectations vital of design and reliability survey or customers and expectations.
information. complain records.
Others Every new design is unique; The method used in Subjective Use in estimating
hence, other additional obtaining this kind of and design characteristic
sources of information information depends Objective of new products and
are normally sought for largely on the source for risk and reliability
every new product. Such and the information estimates for new
external information sources type required. design products.
include; Journals, reliability
organizations, and reliability
standards.
Sources: (Dietrich, 2006; He et al., 2015; King & Sivaloganathan, 1999; Sanchez, 2014; Smith et al., 2012)

presented. However, it is worth mentioning here that, design engineers and reliability experts must
be ready to use any available information that supports their product reliability and design decision-
making processes at the early product design phase.

3.3. Reliability at the Early Phase of Product Design and

the Assessment of Root Cause of Failure
The main goal of any product design or redesigning exercise is to create new products that meet both
the user requirements as well as the product reliability index (Wang, 2017). For product design-driven
companies to succeed in today’s global and rapidly changing marketplace, they must address the cost,
quality, and reliability of their products, early in the product development process (Chin et al., 2008).
Since, reliability has become a default requirement in the design/redesigning of today’s products
(Aikhuele & Turan, 2016), the manner in which they are assessed and obtained from the different
sources has become a major concern to researchers and practitioners. Conventionally, product’s
reliability concerns are assessed and obtained through failure observations during the product’s
lifecycle, however, when introducing new products, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to
capture such representative failure data (Sanchez & Pan, 2011). Other methods like the burn-in
reliability test or prototype testing method employed for screening potential failure are extremely
expensive, and in most cases, may not provide the necessary information, as the result may have little
or no influence in the final design (He et al., 2015; Sanchez & Pan, 2011).

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In spite of the extensive application of these methods for failure detection in product reliability
engineering research, works on the analytical approach of product failure mechanism is still an open
research area (He et al., 2015). Since, most of the current works are mainly focused on the estimation
of lifetime distributions from the viewpoint of conventionally statistical inferences using probability
approach which has been found to be inadequate in handling the uncertainties of failure data and
modeling (Mahapatra & Roy, 2009).
The goal of any product failure mechanism analysis is mainly to identify the root causes of
the failure, determine the components or sensitive features that need modification, determine the
manufacturing and usage involved and finally, to quantify the failure mechanism results (Bernstein,
2014). The identification of root causes which is basically the key task of failure mechanism analysis
is a causality factor(s) which, when corrected or removed, will prevent the occurrence or recurrence
of such failure (Verma, et al., 2010). With the recent increasing changes in the generation of field
reliability data, like the outfitting of sensors on products to capture reliability information and to
monitor the health of complex products and systems (Meeker & Hong, 2014). How to identify and
interpret the quality and reliability data obtained from such sensors to achieve the accurate root
cause(s) of failure and how to analyze and rank them has become a requirement to the development
of continuous in-process reliability improvement which in turn is required for building appropriate
design reliability knowledge at the early product design phase.
The analytical method such as the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) and Fault Tree
Analysis (FTA) which are traditionally used for analyzing root causes of failures (Bowles & Pelaez,
1995) are limited to reliability data and statistical analysis. The FMEA method which was developed
in the 1960s by the United States aerospace industry is a popular engineering technique for identifying,
ranking and evaluating potential failures in engineering. The main goal of the FMEA is to allow risk
analysts/experts identify where and how a specific product might fail and to assess the frequency,
effects and potential causes of different failure modes, in order to determine the failures that should
first to be removed (Liu et al., 2016).
In implementing the FMEA method, a cross-functional team with expertise from different
departments are rottenly chosen to systematically evaluate and quantify the relationships between
the failure modes, effects, causes and controls, and to propose corrective measures or actions for the
product (Zhao et al., 2016). The FMEA defines the risk priorities of potential failure modes using
the Risk Priority Number (RPN), which is calculated as a product of the risk factors: occurrence (O),
severity (S), and detection (D). The RPN of potential failure mode with respect to the risk factors are
evaluated using a 10-point scale as described in (Bian, et al., 2016; Hu-Chen, et al., 2012; Wang, et
al., 2009), where the larger ordinal score indicates a higher level of a dangerous situation.
While the RPN method is regarded as the most established early failure detection and prevention
technique, the method has been heavily criticized in the literature (Aikhuele, et al., 2016; Aikhuele
& Turan, 2017a; Gargama & Chaturvedi, 2011; Liu et al., 2014) for its various limitations and
deficiencies. Among them we can mention, the computation of the RPN that don’t take into account the
relative weights of risk factors, the consideration of only the risk factors O, S, and D thereby neglecting
other vital attributes that may have a significant influence on the failure modes. The difficulty in
estimating the risk factors due to the subjective 10-point scale used for its quantification, and finally,
the mathematical formula used for calculating the RPN which lacks comprehensive scientific basis.
In an attempt to resolve the various limitations and deficiencies described above, several
alternative methods and approaches have been presented in the literature to improve the FMEA
method. Among them we can mention, the mathematical programming methods which are based on
fuzzy weighted geometric mean by Wang et al., (2009) and the data envelopment analysis method
by Netto et al., (2013). The grey relational analysis approach by Geum et al., (2011). The Euclidean
distance-based similarity measure and an incremental learning clustering model for failure assessment
were presented by Tay et al., (2015).

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Other methods include, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method
by Seyed-Hosseini et al., (2006), the DEMATEL and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method
by Liu et al., (2015) and the VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR)
for failure assessment by Safari et al. (2016). Chang & Cheng, (2011) presents the fuzzy ordered
weighted averaging (OWA) and the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL)
method, while the MULTIMOORA method for failure detection was presented by Zhao et al., (2016).
The integrated fuzzy ‘technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution’ (TOPSIS)
and fuzzy ‘analytical hierarchy process’ (AHP) was presented by Kutlu & Ekmekçioǧlu, (2012) and
the intuitionistic fuzzy hybrid TOPSIS method for failure detection was proposed by Liu et al. (2015).
Due to the characteristics and capabilities of the TOPSIS method, it has continued to receive an
increasing attention and application for the evaluation of risk of failure modes in FMEA. However,
in contrast with the existing studies and methods, specifically the TOPSIS-related methods for
reliability (failure) assessment, an intuitionistic fuzzy TOPSIS model which is based on an exponential-
related function (IF-TOPSISEF) has been proposed. The new IF-TOPSISEF (Aikhuele & Turan, 2017b,
2017c) which generates more accurate risk rankings of failure modes uses the exponential-related
function which consists of an attitudinal parameter (λ) to take into account the decision makers’ and
reliability experts attitudinal character to determine the portion of indeterminacy that may be included
in the assessments of the failure modes. The exponential-related function matrix is then used for the
calculation of the separation measures of each failure mode from the intuitionistic fuzzy positive and
negative ideal solutions to determine the relative closeness coefficients of the failure modes. There
by addressing the attributes dependency issues in the traditional TOPSIS methodology and
simultaneously, evaluates the suitability of alternative across all the attributes (risk factors) while
treating the evaluating attributes as interrelated or dependent variables. Using this new approach,
flexible reliability information is obtained which are effective in improving the final (actual) design.

4. CONCLUSION

In this paper, an exploratory study of the evolution of product development engineering from a
historical perspective has been presented. The study which provides an overview of the different
developmental stages of the product development engineering concept also investigates the design
reliability concept, which is one of the key components in the product development engineering
processes.
The investigation, provides a reflection and guidance on how to sort and assess reliability
information early at the product design stage, as well as how to take into account the reliability
experts (decision makers) attitudinal information in the assessment process which is critical in the
case of engineering projects (Chen et al., 2012; Merigó & Gil-Lafuente, 2010). Hence, the study has
proposed an intuitionistic fuzzy TOPSIS model which is based on an exponential-related function
originally presented in (Aikhuele & Turan, 2017b, 2017c) for ensuring flexibility in the final reliability
information obtained as well as accounting for the attitudinal character of the reliability experts
involved in the assessment process.

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Daniel Aikhuele worked as a technical quality inspector in the industry for several years before leaving to obtain
a PhD in Manufacturing Engineering from the University Malaysia Pahang in 2017. Following a short private
research post in Pahang, Daniel will be taking up a lecturing position soon in a Nigerian University. He has
developed expertise in a number of key areas including the use of Hybrid-fuzzy based methods for solving product
development challenges in product reliability assessment at the early product design stage. In capturing appropriate
design reliability knowledge for the to-be-design product and product design concept assessment problem, when
the concepts information is rough, incomplete and needs to be express and reflected in a more holistic manner, in
capturing the attitudinal character of the design stakeholders involved in the final decision-making for the design.
He has over 24 publications including 18 in academic journals.

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