Introduction of Caterpillar Organization

        Caterpillar organization is one of leading manufacturing business of construction and mining equipment. They prepare the natural gas and diesel engines, gas turbines and the diesel-electric locomotives. They are the best providers of these products and serve qualitatively throughout the products they provide. Caterpillar also operates the clothes and shoes license in its portfolios. They even are trying to grow further in different areas and portfolios.

Organization of Caterpillar Organization

Tiger Team of Caterpillar Organization

        A tiger team is commonly defined as a team of diversified professionals who are brought together for a critical project. A tiger team is consists of specialists who are assigned special tasks related to investigation, building or recommendations of possible solutions which are related to unique problems. The members of tiger team are mostly consists of experts who have more experience in their related fields and who know how to deal professionally with a unique problem.

Strengths of Tiger Team 

        As said above that the tiger teams are usually assigned to investigate, solve, build, or to recommend possible solutions to unique problems and worst scenarios. Tiger team is mostly consists of mature experts who knows how to deal with unique situations and unique problems. They are first trained to achieve this much strengths and knowledge. Also they have in-depth knowledge of all the aspects and situations of which they have to deal with.

        They are mostly known for their power and strengths of the team and their ability to handle complex situations every single team member of the tiger team try to enhance and improve the performance and reliability of the tiger team. They provide solutions of day to day problems and problems related to bigger level. Their work scope depends on different situations which may be very large or may be very small. Tiger team may be a team for a few days or may be for many years depend on the scope of their work. They may meet regularly, frequently or rarely. (Faith technologies, 2018)

Weaknesses of Tiger Team and Major Issues

        Apart from such greater strengths and expertise which a tiger team brings to an organization, there are also some weaknesses and issues which are related to tiger team. The one major problem is that the organization has a lot of dependence and a lot of expectations from a tiger team. The organization sometimes has greater expectations from tiger team but unfortunately tiger doesn’t succeed in every situation. There are also cost related issues with tiger team because every individual member of tiger team expects high remunerations from the organization. Sometimes organization does not meet the individual needs of tiger team members so they have to get rid of them. Also tiger team will require a lot of space for their operations in order to concentrate on their work but on the other hand most of the organization does not have such type of facilities with them. Also employer has to do a lot of research before allotting a task to the tiger team because employer wants to make sure whether the tiger would use their skills to compromise the operations in the future.

Members of Tiger Team

        The key in order to keep the small team effective is to stack the deck in your favor by filling it with the people with experience in exactly what you need to do. The following four types of members should the company include in their tiger team i.e. design, technology, operations and software. The members on the design team should include mechanical engineer, industrial engineer, and material engineer. The members on the technology team should include camera engineer, antenna engineer, display engineer and many more. Operations should include manufacturing engineer, tooling engineer etc. and member of software should include firmware engineer software engineer etc. (instrumental, 2018)

Development Process of the New Product

        It is usually a common question related to engineering industries that why so many products fail? There is not one answer related to this question because there are a lot of product failure reasons. One may be because of the companies are so confident about their products that they even ignore the research related to that product or even after their research they ignore the instructions what the research told them about that product. On the other hand there may be some problems with the distribution channels or sometimes the advertisement and marketing policy of the company is wrong related to that product. There are a lot of several different issues which affects the development process of the new products. Some of the most important factors are.

Market research of the New Product

        Before the launch of new product, the company should make market research related to that product. Without market research about a product they would not meet the required targets. Market research provides the company all the necessary information about the product which is necessary in the production of that product. It tells them about what market wants from them and what are their customers looking for in the market now a days.

Timing of the New Product

        Timing is also a very important factor in the development process. Timing tells the company about whether all the operations are going as they are planed. It tells them about the deadline which they had set for the release of this product. If the company misses this deadline then it is the start of failures of the company.

Capacity of the New Product

        Capacity is also another important factor in the product development process. It tells the company about that if the required product or service is developed then does the company have required personnel and manufacturing resources to cope with the success?

Testing of the New Product

        Before the launching of the required product in the market, the company should first test the product. The company should firs make it sure that it has all the required features and facilities what the customers are looking for. Also the company should make sure that product is working properly. The company should also make sure that the distribution channels and sales organizations or OK with it. They should also test promotion and advertisement strategy as well.

Training of the New Product

        The company should provide appropriate training to their employee’s distribution channels before they launch their product in the market. If the product is so unique and complex that it is difficult to learn about it them the company should provide face-to-face training to their employees and distribution channels otherwise literature may work.

Promotion of the New Product

    The company should make appropriate promotion about their product in different markets and stages. They should obtain the services of technology in order to make appropriate promotion. (semantichscholar, 2018)

Market Pull of the New Product

    Market pull is related to all those needs and requirements or solutions to a problem which usually comes from the market place. The need for these solutions and needs usually comes from the customers or the research which the market has done about these.

Technology Push of the New Product

    Technology push is related to when the products require some change which may re-designing of the product or some other changes because of changes in manufacturing methods or the changes in materials. (technology student, 2018)

High-Risk of the New Product

    Every project development is different in its own ways and requires planning processes which are usually different from other company’s planning processes along with constant modification. But the product development managers are exposing their companies to various risk associated with product development. For example risk of delaying the project, risk of increasing cost as compared to the budgeted cost, risk of losing opportunities and many more risks.

Quick-Build of the New Product

    It is a continuous integration and deployment server that provides very flexible build setup. It also offers built proofing, promotion pipelines, and hierarchal configuration management. The development of the new generation of diesel-electric locomotive is mainly based on market-pull and technology-push because new product is one of the most important components of product policy and product management. Also the development of diesel-electric locomotive is mainly pushed through Research and development, production and sales and enters into market without proper consideration of whether or not it satisfies a user need.

Factors to Be Considered Before Providing of Launch Date

    Before providing a launch date, the company should consider the following factors:

Define Your Target Audience

    The Company should first test target audience before they provide their launch date. When the company set their target audience its make it easy for them that what distribution channel should they use in order to reach their audience and in order to make their product easily available for their customers.

Know How to Reach Your Audience

    When the company set their target audience in the first stage they should then require the services of appropriate distribution channels in order to reach the target audience. The company should then make their marketing plan accordingly.

Know the Problem You Are Solving

    Understanding of the challenges the company is solving and how to solve these challenges effectively is very crucial stage for any company. The company should always stay focused on their "who” and “why”.

Validate Your Product

    Before the company provides any launch date of their product they should first take a validation test related to their product. In order to do so they should first make a sample of their product and show it to their customers and know about their interest. If they do show interest then the company should start making otherwise they should stop working on it. The second and simple way to do this is to build a landing page. The company should run adds about this product and see if any one clicks the “buy now” button. If they do so then it means the company has got the validation. (forbes, 2018)

Sustainability of the Business

Sustainable Product Design Framework

        For the company in order to gain advantage against their customers and become more sustainable in the long run, then the company should come up with such strategies that it meets the needs of the customers along with the needs of societies. They should meet the needs of both the society and their customers in order to gain a more equitable balance among economy, ecology and community.

    The Caterpillar incorporation should produce diesel-electric locomotive by looking after the needs of their customers but along with that should produce these products with a strategy in which they can achieve more equitable economy, ecology and community. In order to adopt this strategy they should follow these steps;

They should use local materials in their production in order to reduce transportation emission and reduce costs.

They should come up with unique design in order to reduce the use of material

They should use compostable plastic

They should use alternative for packaging materials

They should also take care of their environment around in order to achieve sustainability. (greendotbioplastics, 2018)

Tools To Improve the Sustainability of the Design

        The product designers of the company should use ecofriendly and life cycling management tools and techniques when they do the planning and research related to their products at the start. The company should utilize sustainable and clean manufacturing tools and produce products which are eco-friendly and can be recycled easily even after their use. They should use these types of materials in order to save our environment from such great amount of pollution. They should also minimize material usage and energy consumption in order to have a sustainable environment. The principle of sustainability will need to be put into the work environment of the company and especially into practice by the designers and business leaders of the company. Also the workers and employees of the company should be provided with appropriate tools which are environmental friendly and do not affect the environment. The business leaders should put sustainable manufacturing technologies in order to achieve these objectives. (warwick.ac.uk, 2018)

References of Caterpillar Organization