When should product strategy focus on forecasting capacity requirements

Discussion Topic

Read the Case "Product Design at Regal Marine" - CH 5 and respond to the following:

· Detail how the concept of product life cycle applies to Regal Marine products?

· What strategy does Regal use to stay competitive?

· Does CAD design technology enhance the productivity of product design - discuss reasons why you believe this to be true?

Competitive Advantage at Regal Marine

Global Company Profile

Regal Marine

Forty years after its founding by potato farmer Paul Kuck, Regal Marine has become a powerful force on the waters of the world. The world’s third-largest boat manufacturer (by global sales), Regal exports to 30 countries, including Russia and China. Almost one-third of its sales are overseas.

Product design is critical in the highly competitive pleasure boat business: “We keep in touch with our customers and we respond to the marketplace,” says Kuck. “We’re introducing six new models this year alone. I’d say we’re definitely on the aggressive end of the spectrum.”

With changing consumer tastes, compounded by material changes and ever–improving marine engineering, the design function is under constant pressure. Added to these pressures is the constant issue of cost competitiveness combined with the need to provide good value for customers.

CAD/CAM is used to design the rain cover of a new product. This process results in faster and more efficient design and production.

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Here the deck, suspended from ceiling cranes, is being finished prior to being moved to join the hull. Regal is one of the first boat builders in the world to earn the ISO 9001 quality certification.

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Here the finishing touches are being put on a mold used for forming the hull.

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Once a hull has been pulled from the mold, it travels down a monorail assembly path. JIT inventory delivers engines, wiring, seats, flooring, and interiors when needed.

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Consequently, Regal Marine is a frequent user of computer-aided design (CAD). New designs come to life via Regal’s three- dimensional CAD system, borrowed from automotive technology. Regal’s naval architect’s goal is to continue to reduce the time from concept to prototype to production. The sophisticated CAD system not only has reduced product development time and cost, but also has reduced problems with tooling and production, resulting in a superior product.

All of Regal’s products, from its $14,000 19-foot boat to the $500,000 52-foot Sports yacht, follow a similar production process. Hulls and decks are separately hand-produced by spraying preformed molds with three to five layers of a fiberglass laminate. The hulls and decks harden and are removed to become the lower and upper structure of the boat. As they move to the assembly line, they are joined and components added at each workstation.

Wooden components, precut in-house by computer-driven routers, are delivered on a just-in-time basis for installation at one station. Engines—one of the few purchased components—are installed at another. Racks of electrical wiring harnesses, engineered and rigged in-house, are then installed. An in-house upholstery department delivers customized seats, beds, dashboards, or other cushioned components. Finally, chrome fixtures are put in place, and the boat is sent to Regal’s test tank for watertight, gauge, and system inspection.

At the final stage, smaller boats, such as this one, are placed in this test tank, where a rain machine ensures watertight fits.

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Goods and Services Selection
Student Tip
Product strategy is critical to achieving competitive advantage.

Global firms like Regal Marine know that the basis for an organization’s existence is the good or service it provides society. Great products are the keys to success. Anything less than an excellent product strategy can be devastating to a firm. To maximize the potential for success, many companies focus on only a few products and then concentrate on those products. For instance, Honda’s focus, its core competency, is engines. Virtually all of Honda’s sales (autos, motorcycles, generators, lawn mowers) are based on its outstanding engine technology. Likewise, Intel’s focus is on microprocessors, and Michelin’s is on tires.

However, because most products have a limited and even predictable life cycle, companies must constantly be looking for new products to design, develop, and take to market. Operations managers insist on strong communication among customer, product, processes, and suppliers that results in a high success rate for their new products. 3M’s goal is to produce 30% of its profit from products introduced in the past 4 years. Apple generates almost 60% of its revenue from products launched in the past 4 years. Benchmarks, of course, vary by industry; Regal introduces six new boats a year, and Rubbermaid introduces a new product each day!

Video 5.1
Product Strategy at Regal Marine

The importance of new products cannot be overestimated. As Figure 5.1 shows, leading companies generate a substantial portion of their sales from products less than 5 years old. The need for new products is why Gillette developed its multiblade razors, in spite of continuing high sales of its phenomenally successful Sensor razor, and why Disney continues to innovate with new rides and new parks even though it is already the world’s leading family entertainment company.

Despite constant efforts to introduce viable new products, many new products do not succeed. Product selection, definition, and design occur frequently—perhaps hundreds of times for each financially successful product. DuPont estimates that it takes 250 ideas to yield one marketable product. Operations managers and their organizations build cultures that accept this risk and tolerate failure. They learn to accommodate a high volume of new product ideas while maintaining the production activities to which they are already committed.

Figure 5.1 Innovation and New Products
Student Tip
Motorola went through 3,000 working models before it developed its first pocket cell phone.

Although the term products often refers to tangible goods, it also refers to offerings by service organizations. For instance, when Allstate Insurance offers a new homeowner’s policy, it is referred to as a new “product.” Similarly, when Citicorp opens a mortgage department, it offers a number of new mortgage “products.”

An effective product strategy links product decisions with investment, market share, and product life cycle, and defines the breadth of the product line. The objective of the product decision is to develop and implement a product strategy that meets the demands of the marketplace with a competitive advantage. As one of the 10 decisions of OM, product strategy may focus on developing a competitive advantage via differentiation, low cost, rapid response, or a combination of these.

Product decision

The selection, definition, and design of products.

Product Strategy Options Support Competitive Advantage
A world of options exists in the selection, definition, and design of products. Product selection is choosing the good or service to provide customers or clients. For instance, hospitals specialize in various types of patients and medical procedures. A hospital’s management may decide to operate a general-purpose hospital or a maternity hospital or, as in the case of the Canadian hospital Shouldice, to specialize in hernias. Hospitals select their products when they decide what kind of hospital to be. Numerous other options exist for hospitals, just as they exist for Taco Bell and Toyota.

Service organizations like Shouldice Hospital differentiate themselves through their product. Shouldice differentiates itself by offering a distinctly unique and high-quality product. Its world-renowned specialization in hernia-repair service is so effective it allows patients to return to normal living in 8 days as opposed to the average 2 weeks—and with very few complications. The entire production system is designed for this one product. Local anesthetics are used; patients enter and leave the operating room on their own; meals are served in a common dining room, encouraging patients to get out of bed for meals and join fellow patients in the lounge. As Shouldice demonstrates, product selection affects the entire production system.

Product Innovation Can Be Driven By Markets, Technology, and Packaging. Whether it is design focused on changes in the market (a), the application of technology at Samsung (b), or a new container at Sherwin-Williams (c), operations managers need to remind themselves that the creative process is ongoing with major production implications.

Taco Bell has developed and executed a low-cost strategy through product design. By designing a product (its menu) that can be produced with a minimum of labor in small kitchens, Taco Bell has developed a product line that is both low cost and high value. Successful product design has allowed Taco Bell to increase the food content of its products from 27¢ to 45¢ of each sales dollar.

Toyota’s strategy is rapid response to changing consumer demand. By executing the fastest automobile design in the industry, Toyota has driven the speed of product development down to well under 2 years in an industry whose standard is still over 2 years. The shorter design time allows Toyota to get a car to market before consumer tastes change and to do so with the latest technology and innovations.

Product decisions are fundamental to an organization’s strategy and have major implications throughout the operations function. For instance, GM’s steering columns are a good example of the strong role product design plays in both quality and efficiency. The redesigned steering column is simpler, with about 30% fewer parts than its predecessor. The result: Assembly time is one-third that of the older column, and the new column’s quality is about seven times higher. As an added bonus, machinery on the new line costs a third less than that on the old line.

Product Life Cycles
Products are born. They live and they die. They are cast aside by a changing society. It may be helpful to think of a product’s life as divided into four phases. Those phases are introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

Product life cycles may be a matter of a few days (a concert t-shirt), months (seasonal fashions), years (Madden NFL football video game), or decades (Boeing 737). Regardless of the length of the cycle, the task for the operations manager is the same: to design a system that helps introduce new products successfully. If the operations function cannot perform effectively at this stage, the firm may be saddled with losers—products that cannot be produced efficiently and perhaps not at all.

1. LO 5.1Define product life cycle

Figure 5.2 shows the four life cycle stages and the relationship of product sales, cash flow, and profit over the life cycle of a product. Note that typically a firm has a negative cash flow while it develops a product. When the product is successful, those losses may be recovered. Eventually, the successful product may yield a profit prior to its decline. However, the profit is fleeting—hence, the constant demand for new products.

Life Cycle and Strategy
Just as operations managers must be prepared to develop new products, they must also be prepared to develop strategiesfor new and existing products. Periodic examination of products is appropriate because strategies change as products move through their life cycle. Successful product strategies require determining the best strategy for each product based on its position in its life cycle. A firm, therefore, identifies products or families of products and their position in the life cycle. Let us review some strategy options as products move through their life cycles.

Figure 5.2 Product Life Cycle, Sales, Cost, Profit, and Loss
Introductory Phase
Because products in the introductory phase are still being “fine-tuned” for the market, as are their production techniques, they may warrant unusual expenditures for (1) research, (2) product development, (3) process modification and enhancement, and (4) supplier development. For example, when the iPhone was first introduced, the features desired by the public were still being determined. At the same time, operations managers were still groping for the best manufacturing techniques.

Growth Phase
In the growth phase, product design has begun to stabilize, and effective forecasting of capacity requirements is necessary. Adding capacity or enhancing existing capacity to accommodate the increase in product demand may be necessary.

Maturity Phase
By the time a product is mature, competitors are established. So high-volume, innovative production may be appropriate. Improved cost control, reduction in options, and a paring down of the product line may be effective or necessary for profitability and market share.

Decline Phase
Management may need to be ruthless with those products whose life cycle is at an end. Dying products are typically poor products in which to invest resources and managerial talent. Unless dying products make some unique contribution to the firm’s reputation or its product line or can be sold with an unusually high contribution, their production should be terminated. 1

Product-by-Value Analysis
The effective operations manager selects items that show the greatest promise. This is the Pareto principle applied to product mix: Resources are to be invested in the critical few and not the trivial many. Product-by-value analysis lists products in descending order of their individual dollar contribution to the firm. It also lists the total annual dollar contributionof the product. Low contribution on a per-unit basis by a particular product may look substantially different if it represents a large portion of the company’s sales.

Product-by-value analysis

A list of products, in descending order of their individual dollar contribution to the firm, as well as the total annual dollar contribution of the product.

A product-by-value report allows management to evaluate possible strategies for each product. These may include increasing cash flow (e.g., increasing contribution by raising selling price or lowering cost), increasing market penetration (improving quality and/or reducing cost or price), or reducing costs (improving the production process). The report may also tell management which product offerings should be eliminated and which fail to justify further investment in research and development or capital equipment. Product-by-value analysis focuses attention on the strategic direction for each product.