product design – The OM Blog by Heizer, Render, & Munson

OM in the News: AI Is Becoming Every Product Designer’s Companion

Artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot have already proven their value in many product designers’ daily design work, asking questions about design decisions and giving advice on design and CAD strategies. (See Chapter 5 in your Heizer/Render/Munson OM text). But AI is moving beyond being a tool to becoming an active collaborator, reports Industry Week (Jan. 24, 2025). There are a huge number of exciting AI applications in design:

Generative design as a standard: AI-driven generative design tools are becoming more popular, producing optimized solutions that human designers might never consider. These tools will seamlessly handle constraints like material properties, manufacturability and sustainability.

AI-Powered decision support: Product designers are increasingly relying on AI to analyze massive datasets, predict performance outcomes and recommend design improvements. AI-powered digital engineering tools that accelerate physics simulation through “simulation surrogates” are helping designers make faster, smarter decisions throughout the product lifecycle. AI models trained on numerical analysis can run simulations up to 1,000 times faster.

Human-AI collaboration: The best results come from teams that embrace a symbiotic relationship between AI and human creativity. AI can help human designers answer questions by doing the legwork and analysis on documents and information. AI will provide expert advice on how to use other computing tools like computer-aided design (CAD), product data management (PDM), and simulation, much like expert human designers provide advice to their colleagues. The latest conceptual industrial design tools take simple sketches and generate rendered design concepts based on text prompts, such as “orange and black controller, Nintendo-like.” Meanwhile, AI assistants for computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software–see Chapter 7– can quickly produce machining strategies, reducing time spent on CAM programming and making manufacturing processes more efficient.

Customer-centric design: AI is also playing a significant role in aligning products with customer preferences. The latest AI product development solutions mine product reviews and other customer feedback data to synthesize design directions tailored to consumer tastes or specific attributes like performance. This insight can help teams create products that better meet market demands.

Classroom discussion questions:

How is AI revolutionizing product design?
Are there disadvantages in becoming AI-dependent?

OM in the News: Building Sustainability Into Product Design

Did you know 80% of a product’s environmental impact is determined in the design phase? With so much dependence on design, it is critical to start thinking about the environmental impact of a product as early as possible, alongside the traditional drivers of cost, quality, and time. To overcome resource scarcity and meet emissions targets, manufacturers are steadily increasing their environmental consciousness, writes Industry Week (April 26, 2024). Those set to succeed are doing so from the very start of their development processes.

Combining the real and digital worlds makes it possible to integrate the entire value chain. This delivers a digital thread that serves as the foundation for collective intelligence, connecting workflows and processes along the value chain. It can also provide designers with access to a comprehensive digital twin informed by simulation results and production data, material information, supplier and product carbon footprint data, etc.

This empowers engineers to rethink design, as they have access to a dynamic and iterative process (outlined in the 5 points below) that is never finished and allows for recycling, remanufacturing and reuse. However, for this to work, sustainability needs to be embedded into all phases of the design process. a point we make in both Ch. 5 (Product Design) and Supp. 5 (Sustainability in the Supply Chain).

1. Conceptual Design In addition to traditional design requirements such as performance, durability, usability and cost, designing for sustainable outcomes means meeting new requirements, including carbon emission caps, water use restrictions and recyclability. Capturing these early is critical .

2. Suppliers When sourcing materials and components, it is important to establish communication with suppliers that best comply with sustainability requirements.

3. Detailed Design The right tools will enable engineers to select the best part materials based on required material properties and the associated sustainability scores. One material may result in a lowered carbon emission rating within manufacturing because it is more recyclable, while another material option might be more durable and extend product life.

4. Validation Validation covers many workflows and engineering domains to ensure the product functions as expected. Innovative materials used to meet sustainability targets might require more thorough testing.

5. Design Improvement This is a continuous journey that extends long after the product is made. Integrating sustainability goals into product design is making that a reality for every company.

Classroom discussion questions:

Why are suppliers an important part of new product design?
Name a product that has gone through these 5 steps.

OM in the News: McDonald’s Decides No More Dry Burgers

In 1948, brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald retooled their original San Bernardino, Calif., restaurant around a slim menu selling burgers for 15 cents. Their restaurant, called McDonald’s, would go on to provide the blueprint for the fast-food business. They shrunk down the patties to make them more affordable, and served them with ketchup, mustard, onions and two pickles—no substitutes, to keep service fast. The concept was a hit.

Assembling the revamped burger in a test kitchen.

Burgers last year accounted for around 40% of U.S. fast-food sales, and most chains can’t make it without a strong contender. Some 68% of Americans eat burgers at fast-food restaurants at least once a month.

The problem for McDonald’s is that it came in 13th among U.S. chains based on the number of customers (28%) calling their burgers desirable, reports The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 1, 2023). White Castle led the list with 72%, and Burger King followed at 52%.

With increased competition in the burger market, McDonald’s executives decided to revamp many of the industrial-scale techniques that have produced cheap, uniform burgers. In some cases, the firm is reviving practices it scrapped long ago in a push for efficiency. “We can do it quick, fast and safe, but it doesn’t necessarily taste great. So, we want to incorporate quality into where we’re at,” said a top exec.

Deciding it’s had enough with dry patties and squishy buns, the firm made more than 50 tweaks on its burgers adding up to the biggest enhancements in decades. They started by cooking the beef with the onions on top of the patty, added room-temperature cheese that melted faster and put it all on the shinier brioche-style bun, a moister bread to better hold heat. They found cooking 6 burgers at a time instead of 8 improved consistency and delivered fresher patties. They calibrated the gap on the metal clamshell that presses burgers on the grill down to the millimeter, to avoid pressing too hard and squeezing out all the juices.

For a chain with tens of thousands of restaurants, the overhaul posed a massive undertaking. Restaurants would have to retrain workers to look out for quality measures like when grills were running too hot and drying out patties. McDonald’s needed to ensure bakeries across the world could comply with its new specifications for buns. The plan has taken 6 years to implement.

Classroom discussion questions:

Other products and services have been around for many years, like the Big Mac, and have also had continued success through enhancements. Identify one such product.
Why did it tale McDonald’s so long to improve its burger?

OM in the News: Ikea Tries to Shrink

IKEA is today the world’s biggest seller of furniture, with 460 mostly franchise-operated stores spread across 62 countries that carry some 9,500 products. Its price-conscious shoppers wonder: How does a nice chair cost only $35?

IKEA grew into a furniture behemoth with a relentless focus on keeping costs low, but that goal has become more challenging, writes The Wall Street Journal (April 26, 2023). The price of metal, glass, wood and plastic have spiraled up, as have shipping costs. Inflation has squeezed consumers’ wallets. IKEA knew that something had to change to keep prices down and profits up, so in the past couple of years they have taken some of their products back to the drawing board.

Designers experimented with ways to reduce IKEA’s reliance on wood to cut material and shipping costs. Lighter, less expensive plastics, they discovered, could be used instead in cabinet doors and drawers. IKEA’s wooden furniture has traditionally used veneer that is glued onto a main structure of particleboard. Particleboard is formed from compacted wood chips and sawdust, and is significantly less expensive than solid wood.

They learned that they could substitute less expensive recycled aluminum for zinc, which had doubled in price over two years to $4,371 per ton. Recycled aluminum is now going into bathroom hooks and other products. When they turned to packaging, they cut freight costs by purging flat packs of “fresh air and wasted space.”

For one of IKEA’s most popular office swivel chairs, the Flintan, smaller armrests and less steel and plastic in the back cut manufacturing costs. The new Flintan is the same size as its predecessor, but it’s much more efficient to ship after designers tweaked its components to make them fit more snugly into a flat pack. IKEA can now squeeze 6,900 Flintans into one shipping container, up from 2,750.

Designers likewise reworked the Säbövik bed, by changing the construction of its wooden frame. It was previously made of two thin layers of wood glued together. IKEA settled on a less expensive and lighter combination of solid wood, plywood and a compressed structure of wood strands and glue. The Säbövik used to come flat-packed in 3 cardboard boxes, but now fits into just 2 more compact boxes, enabling the company to cram twice as many flat-packed beds into a shipping container.

Classroom discussion questions:

What is IKEA’s competitive advantage? (See Chapters 2 and 5 in your Heizer/Render/Munson text).
Is there a downside in the product redesigns such as the ones noted above?

OM in the News: Coke Goes 100% Recycled

Coca-Cola will soon begin selling sodas in completely recycled plastic in the U.S. for the first time, reports Industry Week (Feb. 9, 2021) . The initial items will be introduced this month in a group of states that includes California and Florida, for drinks such as Sprite, Coke, and Diet Coke in 13.2-ounce bottles made from 100% recycled plastic.

The company — which has been named a top plastic polluter by a leading non government organization (NGO) — will soon distribute additional soda and bottled water items from completely recycled packages. The U.S. is the 19th market worldwide where Coca-Cola now sells item entirely made of recycled packaging. The new measures amount to a 20% reduction in the company’s use of new plastic across North America compared to 2018. They will collectively reduce 10,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually in the U.S. – the equivalent of taking 2,120 cars off the road for one year

Concerns about plastic waste “continue to be top of mind for our consumers,” said Coke’s VP for sustainability, adding that the new steps are “a major milestone in a large and complex market. Introducing 100% recycled PET bottles is a big proof point of how recycling can help create a circular economy.” Coca-Cola has set a target of using at least 50% recycled content in packaging by 2030.

In 2020, the group Break Free From Plastic placed Coca-Cola, along with PepsiCo and Nestle, as the world’s “top plastic polluters” for the third year in a row and called on the groups to end single-use plastic packaging worldwide.

Classroom discussion questions:

How does this move relate to the Triple Bottom Line discussed in Supp. 5 of your text?
Why is plastic waste a major issue?

OM in the News: How a 50-Year-Old Design Came Back to Haunt Boeing

“A set of stairs may have never caused so much trouble in an aircraft,” writes The Los Angeles Times (March 18, 2019). First introduced as a short-hop commuter jet in 1968, the Boeing 737-100 had folding metal stairs attached to the fuselage that passengers climbed to board before airports had jetways. Ground crews hand-lifted luggage into the cargo holds in those days, long before the advent of motorized belt loaders.

A Boeing 737 Max 8 airplane parked in Seattle awaits clearance to be delivered to a client.

That low-to-the-ground design was a plus then, but it has proved to be a constraint that engineers modernizing the 737 have had to work around ever since. The compromises required to push forward a more fuel-efficient version of the plane — with larger engines — led to the controversial flight control software system now under investigation. The crisis comes after 50 years of remarkable success in making the 737 a profitable workhorse. (Boeing has a massive 737 backlog of 4,700 orders).

But the decision to continue modernizing the jet, rather than starting at some point with a clean design, resulted in engineering challenges that created unforeseen risks. “Boeing has to sit down and ask itself how long they can keep updating this airplane,” said a former pilot. Few, if any, complex products designed in the 1960s are still manufactured today. The IBM 360 mainframe computer was put out to pasture decades ago. The Apollo spacecraft is revered history.

Over the years, the FAA has implemented new and tougher design requirements, but a “derivative” gets many of the designs grandfathered in. Still some aspects of the legacy 737 design are vintage headaches, such as the obsolete ground clearance designed to allow a staircase. To handle a longer fuselage and more passengers, Boeing added larger, more powerful engines on the 737 MAX, but that required it to reposition them to maintain ground clearance. As a result, the MAX can sometimes pitch up. Hence the software fix..

The 737 has survived other crises. In a 1988 accident on a Hawaii flight, the entire top of the plane came off. A flight attendant was sucked out and 65 were injured because of faulty lap joints in the aluminum skin of the fuselage, which Boeing reengineered.

Classroom discussion questions:

What are the plusses and minuses of reengineering an older plane model?
Is it possible that this is a training or maintenance problem–not a design one?

OM in the News: The Tiny Plastics in Clothes Are Becoming a Big Problem

Makers of sportswear and fleece jackets are trying to address concerns about tiny plastic particles from synthetic clothing finding their way into seafood and drinking water. While the plastics backlash has focused on single-use products like straws, bottles and coffee cups, synthetic clothing is gaining attention because such garments shed plastic every time they are washed.

Each year, more than a half-million metric tons of microfibers—the equivalent of 50 billion plastic water bottles—enter the ocean from the washing of synthetic textiles, reports The Wall Street Journal (March 8, 2019). While all clothing sheds fibers when washed, synthetic particles—unlike wool and cotton—don’t biodegrade. Most conventional washing-machine filters aren’t designed to trap such tiny particles, and while wastewater-treatment plants capture a big slice, they don’t trap everything. The problem is worse in countries that use lots of synthetic clothing and have fewer wastewater-treatment plants.

The number of microfibers entering the ocean is forecast to accelerate as demand for clothes rises. More than 22 million metric tons of microfibers are estimated to enter the ocean between 2015 and 2050. Microplastics have turned up in seafood, drinking water, beer, honey and sugar, but the impact on human health is unclear. Research shows that ingesting microplastics can hurt the ability of planktonic organisms to feed and the ability of fish and marine worms to gain energy from food.

Pending bills in New York and California would require labels on clothes made from more than 50% synthetic material to tell consumers that these shed plastic microfibers when washed. Patagonia found fabrics shed lots of microfibers on the first wash, but few in subsequent washes. That suggests pretreating garments before they are sold could potentially capture and recycle what otherwise goes down consumers’ drains. H&M said it is exploring whether clothes can be designed to minimize shedding. The brand is monitoring the development of alternative biodegradable fibers.

Classroom discussion questions:

Is this a primarily a sustainability issue or a product design issue?
Are your students aware of the problem?

Video Tip: Product Design at Levi Strauss

Levi Strauss’ new design lab has created video game-like software that allows designers to build new styles on an iPad, reports Fast Company (Feb. 28, 2018). This allows them to take one of Levi’s styles like the 501 in one of a few basic colors, then use buttons and levers to distress the jeans, add studs, rips, or other design elements. The lab makes the 3D graphics more realistic than other tech on the market. The digital file that the designers produce can be immediately sent to a laser machine, which will produce the design on a prototype of real jeans.

This is very different from how jeans are typically prototyped, which involves taking an image and having people manually re-create it on a pair of jeans using sanding and chemical treatments. With this new system, the images are realistic, and the laser turns that vision into reality within 90 seconds, reducing the prototype process to just 3 steps. Previously, with all the drawing, reiterating, and then manually creating prototypes, it took 12-18 steps.

That digital file can also be sent to a manufacturing facility, where an entire season’s worth of jeans can be made using automated lasers rather than manual labor. This creates a much safer environment for workers and reduces the number of harsh chemicals used. Levi’s is trying to phase out, for example, potassium permanganate, which has terrible side effects when inhaled, including sore throat, burning sensations, and labored breathing.

The process could radically speed up the time it takes to bring a new design to market. If a new trend emerges, a designer could whip up a prototype within hours, which could then be produced at scale within months. This is important because there is a lot of waste in the fashion industry, a sizable chunk of which comes from new clothes that were never sold. Between 80 and 100 billion never-worn garments are sent to landfills globally every year!

The Fast Company article includes a very interesting 5-minute video describing the design process. (Click on the photo called Lasers! Gas!)

OM in the News: Product Design at McDonald’s

McDonald’s is dropping the Minute Maid apple-juice box from its Happy Meals and replacing it with a watered-down organic juice with less sugar made by Honest Kids. The change is the latest step in the evolution of the Happy Meal toward healthier options as parents are increasingly turning away from 100% fruit juice in favor of water and other drinks with less sugar.

Amid a backlash against the fast-food industry for contributing to America’s obesity problem, McDonald’s six years ago reduced the size of its french fry servings in Happy Meals by more than half and added sliced apples. Later, the chain stopped promoting soft drinks as an option in children’s meals and instead started including juice, low-fat milk and water on its menu boards and in its advertising.

McDonald’s also has added low-fat yogurt and clementines as side options, and last year removed artificial preservatives, colors and flavors from its chicken nuggets. McDonald’s could, of course, still do more to make Happy Meals more nutritious, perhaps by offering vegetables and rotating in different fruits to expose children to a variety of healthy items. But a company spokeswoman said the company is proud of the changes it has made and that, “We are committed to continuing our food journey for the benefit of our guests” (The Wall Street Journal , Sept. 16-17, 2017).

Product design is an ongoing process at McDonald’s, just as it is at Apple, 3M, Honda, and other industry leaders that we discuss in Chapter 5.

Classroom discussion questions:

Is product design the most important of the ten OM decisions?
What other major product design changes has McDonald’s made in the past two decades?

OM in the News: Saving Money and the Takata Airbag Crisis

The crisis over exploding Takata airbags does not seem to abate. Even in my own family, three of our cars have been recalled, but we have been waiting for months for replacement parts to become available. (And here in humid Orlando, the tricky properties of the ammonium nitrate propellants, or explosives, which can break down in moisture and warm temperatures, makes many people with these airbags nervous).

The New York Times’ (Aug. 27, 2016) historical article provides a case study of quality, supply chains, and reliability (the topics of Chapters 6, 11, and 17) worth sharing with your students. The Times writes:”In the late 1990s, General Motors got an unexpected and enticing offer. A little-known Japanese supplier, Takata, had designed a much cheaper automotive airbag. So G.M. turned to its airbag supplier, Autoliv, and asked it to match the cheaper design or risk losing the automaker’s business. But when Autoliv’s scientists studied the Takata airbag, they found that it relied on a dangerously volatile compound in its inflater, a critical part that causes the airbag to expand.”

Today, that compound is at the heart of the largest automotive safety recall in history. At least 14 people have been killed and more than 100 have been injured by Takata inflaters that exploded into shrapnel. More than 100 million of its airbags have been installed in cars in the U.S. by G.M. and 16 other automakers. New details of G.M.’s decision-making process almost 20 years ago suggest that a quest for savings of just a few dollars per airbag compromised a critical safety device, resulting in these deaths. (It turns out that workers at the Takata plant in Georgia manipulated tests meant to measure whether inflaters were airtight). Even with the record recall, deadly accidents and research critical of ammonium nitrate, Takata continues to manufacture airbags with the compound — and automakers continue to buy them. The airbags appear in the 2016 models of 7 automakers, and they are also being installed in cars as replacement airbags for those being recalled.

Classroom discussion questions:

Are automakers also to blame ethically in this supply chain issue?
Why is this a continuing problem?

OM in the News: Designed for Demise

Apple's Liam robot can take apart 1.2 million iPhones a year — Apple’s Liam robot can take apart 1.2 million iPhones a year

Apple just introduced a piece of technology that will likely never be used by any consumer. Instead, it kind of cleans up after them: a robot that breaks down iPhones for recycling. The arrival of Liam—a 29-armed robot –speaks to a big challenge facing tech manufacturers today. Even as they strive to entice consumers to ditch their existing devices for the next new thing, companies must figure out what to do with the growing numbers of devices that are destined for the scrapheap as a result. “We think as much now about the recycling and end of life of products as the design of products itself,” says Apple’s VP of environment, policy and social initiatives.

Other electronics makers take a different recycling approach, designing products that simplify disassembly by replacing glue and screws with parts that snap together, for instance. Some also have reduced the variety of plastics used and avoid mercury and other hazardous materials that can complicate disposal. Samsung designed a 2016 model of its 55-inch curved television for easier disassembly, eliminating 30 of 38 screws, replacing them with snap closures. Now the TVs can be dismantled in less than 10 minutes.

The constant churn of new devices has contributed to an increase in electronic waste, some of which ends up in developing nations where local residents must deal with the health and environmental risks, writes The Wall Street Journal (June 8, 2016). “Many of the environmental problems are made during the design process,” says a U. of Illinois professor. He says a product’s design choices for the types of materials and varieties of components are critical.

Classroom discussion questions:

Describe the “design for disassembly” model in Supplement 5.
Why is this issue important to operations managers?

OM in the News: How 3-D Printing is Saving the Italian Artisan

A worker in Italy polishes a lampshade created by a 3D printer.

Northeast Italy’s industrial heartland stretches roughly from Milan to Venice. In the 1960s, farmers in the region began setting up small family-owned businesses, each specializing in just one small part of a finished product. Within a generation, many of these companies became world leaders in their respective fields, and small Italian cities thrived as manufacturing hubs. The town of Montebelluna once produced 3/4 of the world’s ski boots. About 70% of Europe’s chairs were designed and manufactured by 1,200 small outfits near Manzano.

But the region has fallen on hard times. Italy’s craftsmen have been undermined by competition from China–and the industrial sector has shed about 135,000 jobs—17% of its total workforce. A few years ago, in an effort to diversify offerings, one firm teamed up with an artist to create manufacture-to-order lamp shades and jewelry on 3D printers. The pieces take shape slowly, each layer fused from powdered nylon by a high-power laser. The project was a surprising success, building products that no one had earlier envisioned.

Techniques such as the 3D printing have helped turn northeastern Italy into an unlikely hothouse of innovation, writes BusinessWeek (May 5, 2015). Last year growth in the region was positive for the first time since 2007. A trade school in Trento for 14-18 year olds, specializing in fashion design and tailoring, recently added a class in which students incorporate 3D printing, laser cutting, and microcontroller chips into their designs. “You have to offer the jobs of the future,” says the administrator.

The use of 3D printing and other similar technologies is expected to boost revenue at Italy’s small-scale manufacturers by 15% and allow companies to compete with multinationals, like YouTube videos hold their own against traditional video production. The advent of rapid prototyping and other innovations means “you can compensate for your disadvantages with variety, customization, and a rapid response to what the market is demanding,” says an Italian business professor. “If something doesn’t work, you simply stop producing. You haven’t filled a warehouse.”

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Name several other clusters and their products.

2. What are the advantages of 3-D printing in this Italian industry?

OM in the News: It’s Ikea’s World

At Ikea’s distribution center in Älmhult, Sweden, pallets are stacked and retrieved through a fully automated process.

In a stunning global expansion, the Swedish home furnishings giant has been quietly planting its blue and yellow flag in places you’d never expect. “Pay attention, Wal-Mart:” writes Fortune (April 6, 2015), “You could learn a few things.” Ikea, it seems, is a genius at selling Ikea—flat packing, transporting, and reassembling its quirky Swedish styling all across the planet. The furniture and furnishings brand is in more countries than Wal-Mart, Carrefour, and Toys “R” Us.

In an industry where the product is often passed down from generation to generation, Ikea has shaken up the paradigm. It kept its prices down with an obsessive focus on costs. It might skip an extra coating of lacquer on the underside of a table that people never see or use. The company has also stripped out as much labor as possible from the system, pushing tasks that were once done by traditional retailers onto the customer. Flat packed furniture made it easier for customers to take purchases with them, cutting out the expense of stocking and delivery. (Ikea figured out flat packing in 1956, when a designer took the legs off a Lövet table to get it in his trunk.) The magic of flat packing allows goods to be jammed into shipping containers without wasting any space. Wasted space means wasted money and is also environmentally unfriendly. “I hate air,” says Ikea’s head of packaging.

The firm’s success, in large part, is based on improving its product design. As much as it has doubled down on market research and logistics, Ikea has been relentless in its focus on design. Ikea comes up with some 2,000 new products every year. Products under development go through rapid prototyping in the pattern shop to provide a sense of what they will actually look like in the flesh. During Fortune’s visit, one of the four 3-D printers was outputting a toilet brush. If air is the enemy in shipping, it is the ally in design. “The more air in our products, the better,” says Ikea.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. What operations strategies are key to Ikea’s success?

2. How pleased are students who have had to assemble the products themselves?

OM in the News: Airbus Invents the “Flying Doughnut”

The Airbus design would revolutionize air travel

“Airbus’s design for a future aircraft looks less like a conventional airliner and more like something from a 1950s sci-fi comic,” writes The Financial Times (Nov. 17, 2014). If a patent application filed by the European aerospace and defense group takes off, future passengers could fasten their seat belts in cabins shaped like giant doughnuts – or flying saucers.The UFO-like shape addresses a problem facing aircraft designers. Cylindrical shapes are good at containing the stresses of pressurized cabins, but huge pressures on the cylinder’s front and rear ends need to be managed with strong, heavy structures.

Other futuristic ideas that the company have patented include the idea of an economy class seat for standing passengers shaped like a bicycle saddle; immersive virtual reality helmets for delivering in-flight entertainment; and, most alarmingly of all, a windowless cockpit.

The “flying doughnut”, however, is the company’s most radical reinvention of aircraft structure. The “simple and efficient” solution would involve passengers not only receiving their in-flight meals from trolleys negotiating curved aisles, but also learning an entirely new way of boarding. Diagrams in the patent application show passengers entering the aircraft through steps leading up to doors arranged around the hole in the doughnut’s middle.

The design fits with the concepts some aerospace companies have been considering as they pursue the next step in fuel efficiency. One exec at GE Aviation said designs such as Airbus’s could be aerodynamically more efficient than traditional designs. “It is an approach that reduces the overall fuel burn for the aircraft.”

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why is this an important OM issue?

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the doughnut concept?

OM in the News: Designing a Spot for the iPhone in Your Car

Jeep designers got inspiration for this in-door net when they peeked in car windows and saw a bottle secured with a bungee cord

When you are covering Chapter 5, Design of Goods and Services, and want a current example of all the issues operations managers face, here is a Wall Street Journal article (July 18, 2013) you may find interesting. In it, we find that Chris Shinouskis, whose title is “Engineering Specialist for Storage” at GM, is one of a handful of designers who carve out compartments to hold the ever-growing array of items people bring into their cars.

Adding storage can be a hard-fought battle, especially as cars today come crammed with high-tech safety, information and entertainment systems, all of which require space-hogging wiring and hardware. But buyers are demanding it–65% of new-car buyers said interior storage is “very” or “extremely important”– as they spend more time on the road and bring their tablets to stay plugged in.

Complicating the storage challenge is the fact that it can take 4 years to develop or completely redesign a model, while the technology world moves much faster. For example, Apple offered 4 generations of its iPad tablet in under 3 years. Matt Rutman, a Ford storage specialist, was adamant that the new SUV needed a place, right above the shifter, for mobile-phone storage and charging. “I was told it wasn’t possible,” says Rutman. “So I went back to my own computer and figured it out myself.” His solution involved redoing the ventilation system behind the dash, and moving up the video screen and controls.

The glove compartment, in particular, often becomes catchall for junk, so Chrysler has just designed a glove box in its new Dodge Dart deep enough to fit a small laptop or tablet. To make it fit, Chrysler had to mount the heating and cooling unit vertically, instead of the normal horizontal fit. With the importance of drinks and cell phones, the 2014 Chevy Malibu offers two cup holders and two cellphone cradles, one each for the driver and the passenger.

Discussion questions:

1. What is the role of value engineering in these auto design decisions?

2. What issues do “storage specialists” face?