TABLE OF CONTENTS Tim Williams
Really, every chapter in this book has been about design for production. As was implied in the introduction, the ability that marks out a professional designer is the ability to design products or systems that work under all relevant circumstances and which can be manufactured easily.
The sales and marketing engineer addresses the questions, "Can I sell this product?" and, "How much can I sell this product for?" This book hasn't touched on these issues, important though they are to designers; it has assumed that you have a good relationship with your marketing department and that your marketing colleagues are good at their job. But you as designer also have to address another set of questions, which are:
Can the purchasing department source the components quickly and cheaply?
Can the production department make the product quickly and cheaply?
Can the test department test it easily?
Can the installation engineers or the customer install it successfully?
It is as well to bear all these questions in mind when you are designing a product, or even part of one. Your company's financial health, and consequently your and others' job security, ultimately depends on it. A good way to monitor these factors is to follow a checklist.
Have you involved purchasing staff as the design progressed?
Are the parts available from several vendors or manufacturers wherever possible? Have you made extensive use of industry standard devices?
Where you have specified alternate sources, have you made sure...
