From Concept to Manufacturing—How and Why

This paper describes about conceiving a concept and t ransforming it into a commercially successful product. It gives details of impa rting creativity, synergy, advantages and disadvantages of large scale computeri sation, motivational aspects etc. Several aspects of a product design to cost e ffective manufacturing, with case histories, including tuning of men and machine ries, various constraints and solutions to introduce a new product are discu ssed. This paper also gives the "how and why " facts to conceive an idea, trans forming it into a prototype, and methods of converting into a reliable and cost effective product. It is a fact that "you get it only when you look for it" and one must look throu gh the nose, ears, eyes and other sense organs in order to identify a "need". C ustomer satisfaction that develops a good customer relationship originates when "the need" is properly identified and satisfied to the greatest extent possible. The service that is carried out to satisfy "the need" has to be delivered with enough care. Most of the people are provided with appropriate sense organs to identify "the n eed" and unfortunately only a few can look through and see the problem. It is true that only these few can identify the needs of the society and conceive a n idea. This paper discusses several methods of looking through in order to ide ntify "the need". Having identified the need, only a few have the capability to convert it into workable prototypeseither in its crude form or full fled ged model because only these people have the long term vision and know ledge of various aspects of creativity. Details of required outlook and capacit y to generate such creativity is also discussed in this paper. Manufacturing engineering is an art and only a few in the habit of conceiving a product idea could transform it into a product that could be manufactured. Manu facturing engineering needs knowledge and the skill of managing many things. It means how to transform a prototype into reliable, cost effective and saleable p roduct that could be delivered within a short notice in required quantity. The art of manufacturing needs high levels of common sense, capacity to blend theory into practice, knowledge of various shop level problems etc., in order to make the product a successful one. This paper deals with the above concepts including the knack of identifying "the need", developing a prototype and converting it into a successful product. It also deals with various stages of transformations, difficulties that one has to undergo, several methods to be adopted to achieve the set goal etc. It also des cribes few case histories and the ultimate satisfaction one derives at the end.