Operations Management: An Integrated Approach, 5th Edition

PRODUCT DESIGN AND PROCESS SELECTION ACROSS THE ORGANIZATION

The strategic and financial impact of product design and process selection mandates that operations work closely with other organizational functions to make these decisions. Operations is an integral part of these decisions because it understands issues of production, ease of fabrication, productivity, and quality. Now let's see how the other organizational functions are involved with product design and process selection.

Marketing is impacted by product design issues because they determine the types of products that will be produced and affect marketing's ability to sell them. Marketing's input is critical at this stage because marketing is the function that interfaces with customers and understands the types of product characteristics customers want. It is marketing that can provide operations with information on customer preferences, competition, and future trends.

Process selection decisions impact marketing as well. They typically require large capital outlays, and once made, they are typically difficult to change and are in place for a long time. Process decisions affect the types of future products that the company can produce. Because of this, marketing needs to be closely involved in ensuring that the process can ...