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FHE, Inc

This outline is to SUPPLEMENT the outline Shou provided, not replace any of the content; I stillthink most of that information is applicable.

I. Executive Summary (1 2 paragraphs)

II. Background (

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Hart. The joining of the Marketing and Engineering departments is to facilitate cooperation

between the two, especially for new-product introductions. Marketing Product Managers develop

new-product ideas and manage the business impact of new products. In the Engineering side,

Technical Program Managers (TPMs) are responsible for the technical direction of the projects.

Finally, the Manufacturing Managers are given product specifications for designing the production

process, scheduling production, ordering materials, and processing materials and components into

finished products. (Job descriptions for the Technical Program Managers and Product Managers

are shown in Exhibits 2 and 3.)

The New-Product Development Planning Schedule (Exhibit 4) begins with a marketing

request followed by a concept conference with the Engineering department. The Engineering

department prepares a TSAR detailing development costs, product costs, schedules, and product

technical specifications. Once approved, the engineering development begins. Engineering Service

and Administration, headed by Al Hanson, prepares drafts, models, tests and technical

documentation services. Hansons team experiences frequent bottlenecks because their workload

from TPMs is unpredictable. TPMs attest that the unpredictability is due to last-minute

uncertainties in the product schedule. Lastly, the new-product is sent to Manufacturing. All too

often, some problems occur after the product is released. FHE is considering the use of a new

CAD-CAM system to coordinate marketing, engineering and manufacturing.

FHE has been taking somewhat a sequential approach in its product development process.

The process starts with a concept from the Marketing, then the concept is passed to the

Engineering for product design, and then to the Manufacturing for production. The Manufacturing

contributes very little to the development process. The reason being is that the Manufacturing is

tied up with production issues, which ironically is a result of lacked of inputs from the

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Manufacturing in the first place. Although the TPMs attend to predict the problems that might

occur during manufacturing, many issues might be unforeseeable by the TPMs such as capacity,

inventory policies. Once a product goes to manufacturing, there might not be enough time to fix

issues within schedule. Consequently, it will cause delay bringing new products into market.

Besides lack of inputs from the Manufacturing, the Engineering Services department is

facing with frequent occurrences of fluctuating workloads. The main reason is that uncertainties in

project schedules, requirements are often unknown until the last minute. All projects require the

same services. Therefore, the department is often working on many projects at the same time. As

result, the quality of the services is being affected. Consequently, all the issues will come to light

during the manufacturing stage. Although the implementation of CAD will increase efficiency and

reduce errors among apartments, the core problem still lies within the quality of the services

provided by engineering as direct result of fluctuating workloads.

Its sometimes not clear who is responsible for what, and when should product managers

get involved. The product managers and the TPMs share the same responsibility in term of

coordinating new product developments. The product managers lead the way of the developments

and delegate much of the developments to the TPMs in term of design, selection of materials,

technical description, just to name a few. Its so easy for the product managers to forget about their

responsibility and defer all decisions to TPMs. Vise verse, the TPMs might not want to

communicate with the product managers regarding issues. The TPMs could blindly follow the

requirements given by product managers and forfeit on cost and quality. Or TPMs could work with

product managers to improve product design, cut cost and resolve foreseeable problems. There is

not a clear policy in place to facilitate communication between the groups. Building a consumer

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oriented product requires more than just great engineering or market inside, it needs inputs from

both the product manager and the TPMs to make sure a product design is appealing to customers.