Please download the following 4 files
This course is “Operations Management For Competitive Advantage”. Please answer the following questions and strictly follow the requirements of “Guidelines for Group Discussion” in the PDF file.
Be sure to read the documents in PDF 1 and PDF 2 before answering
Criteria:
Be sure to give it to me on the 2.7th of Los Angeles time, each question must be 350+ words, must have more than 4 references
The most important grading requirement is: 10 pts
Entries reflect readings/research done well, are comprehensive, show team efforts/expertise, have convincing solutions/reasons, and relate directly to questions.
Week 6: Product and Service Design
Please read the “1” pdf and answer the following questions
·
6G Product Design
Be sure your group is ready to lead and/or discuss the following question in class, with research or facts‐based evidence. (PDF 1 page 23)
1. There are unmet needs and wants out there. We know that. What we don’t know is whether these unmet needs/wants are known or unknown.
1) Could you think of and explain two or three cases of known unmet needs/wants?
2) What would be a good way to systematically uncover unknown unmet deeds/wants?
Watching DSC CEO interview and other related YouTube videos may help.
Reference video given by professor
Product design process
OXO Smart Design
Nike Flyknit
Untuckit
The Squaty Potty
Miimo what?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Gn2gsXT6s
Please read the “2” pdf and answer the following questions
· 6G Service Design
Be sure your group is ready to lead and/or discuss the following question in class, with research or facts‐based evidence. (PDF 2 page 25)
2. There is a trend of turning high contact services into lower contact to save costs.
1) How would you do it without letting customers feel they are being neglected or short-changed?
2) How would you take it to a different level and make customers “want” to use the low contact service?
Please use examples and references.
Reference video given by professor
Ikea servicescape
Boston Coffeehouse
Starbucks store design
Gas delivery anyone?
Product Design
Product design is the process of identifying
a market opportunity (needs and wants),
clearly defining the problem, developing a
proper solution, and validating the solution
with real users. The solution is loosely
inclusive of products, services, and digital
products (apps, webs, etc.).
*Differences between needs and wants?
Needs and Wants
Product Design Process
Problem or
unmet
needs/wants
Problem solved
or needs/wants
satisfied
Known Unmet Needs and Wants
Unknown Unmet Needs and Wants
Many Designs Fail
Good Product Designs
Design for manufacturing and assembly (DfMA):
develop creative product designs that use optimal
manufacturing processes and reduced production cost.
(easy to make)
Good Product Designs
Design for the environment (DfE, EcoDesign): designs
that use less materials (thinner water bottles, detergent
in pouch vs plastic bottle, wine in box vs glass bottle) or
biodegradable/recycled materials, can be
recycled/reused, and cost less in the entire life cycle.
Good Product Designs?
Design for profitability: ensuring constant cash flow
with service reminders or proprietary parts.
Product Design
Things that make sense…or not!
Eco Design
Popular in Japan
and Europe, this
wash basin on
top of the toilet
reservoir is for
people to wash
hands then (grey)
water is stored
beneath for the
next flush.
Japanese Bidet/Washlet
Never run out of toilet paper…
A Real Product
Does it make sense, a product that allows women to pee like a
guy? Where and when would you use it? Can you sell this? How?
Available at REI
Women Friendly Designs?
Which one is REAL women friendly and which one
is simply “pink it and shrink it” design to create
something that seems to be women friendly?
Pink Tax?
Women pay more for essentially the same
products that target them.
Senior Friendly Designs: Oxo
Smart Design. Products and services that matter.
http://smartdesignworldwide.com/about/
The $2000 Vacuum
Nike
FlyKnit
A material made up of
strong yet lightweight
strands of yarn that
have been woven into a
one‐piece upper,
securing an athlete’s
foot to the shoe
platform.
Could Nike bring manufacturing back now that the
labor‐intensive part can be fully automated?
Shirts Made to Be Worn Untucked?!
Challenges
Here are the problems… any solutions? (too much trash, dried
out glue, when to replace Brita filter, air in wine bottle/ice cream tub)
Discussion Questions
Please research the following questions and
provide evidence to support your answers.
Everyone: Show and tell, bring one favorite product of
yours to explain why you like/hate its design based on
our discussions. Bring/explain another one that’s
designed for the environment.
Everyone: Respond to one challenge in the previous
slide about challenges.
Everyone: Do you like Untuckit as a company and why?
Is it likely to succeed like Oxo or Dyson?
Group Discussion
Be sure your group is ready to lead and/or
discuss the following question in class, with
research or facts‐based evidence.
There are unmet needs and wants out there. We
know that. What we don’t know is whether these
unmet needs/wants are known or unknown.
Could you think of and explain two or three cases
of known unmet needs/wants? What would be a
good way to systematically uncover unknown
unmet deeds/wants? Watching DSC CEO interview
and other related YouTube videos may help.
Service Design
It’s the activity of planning and organizing a
business’s resources (people, equipment, and
processes) in order to improve its quality and
enhance the customer experience.
Servicescape: Totality of the ambience and physical
environment in which a service occurs. I mean everything
involved in the service delivery. Also called service setting.
High & Low Customer Contact Service: High-contact
service means you offer customers a lot of hand-holding
and direct support, while low-contact service means you
give them tools to sort things out for themselves. If you
can get business done without talking to a store employee,
it’s low contact.
Servicescape
Servicescape: reception area, certificates on the wall,
relaxing music, color scheme, lighting, white robes, gloves
Starbucks Store Design
“What you don’t want is a customer walking into a store in
downtown Seattle, walking into a store in the suburbs of
Seattle, and then going into a store in San Jose and seeing
the same store.
Starbucks’s current mission is to create “sustainably designed,
locally relevant stores that inspire and nurture the human spirit
one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.”
“It’s all about us meeting our customers where they are in their
day.”
I think we have managed to, with a simple cup of coffee and a
very unique experience, enhance the lives of millions of
people by re-creating a sense of community, by bringing
people together and recognizing the importance of place in
people’s lives.
High vs. Low Contact System
High contact: a greater level of interaction exists
between service providers and customers, such as
health care, hotels, public transportation, some retailers,
and schools. High contact allows a greater degree of
customization of the service delivered to individuals.
Low contact: there is a low level of direct contact with
customers, such as coin laundry, mail box rentals,
medical test labs, and some retailers. Work is more
standardized and completed in an assembly line fashion.
One question to ask:
Can a customer complete a purchase with minimum
contact with employees? If yes, then it’s low contact.
High vs. Low Contact System
High & Low contact: The higher the contact, the more
expensive it is and the more customized it can be.
High vs. Low Contact System
How to use low contact service to give customer a high
contact feeling? Takashimaya vs. Amazon Go.
Service Design
It All Started with a Stupid Question…
Think about this
stupid idea of
putting people on
the conveyor belt…
and why not?
Service Design: the Idea
Airlines Luggage Handling
Basic idea and process:
People and luggage arrive together at airport
People and luggage are separated
People and luggage are transported together
People and luggage are reunited
It’s a small observation. Then someone at the airline asked a
question why do WE handle the bags, rather than asking
passengers to carry them on board? Airlines started to charge
bag fees at $20 or $25 a piece. Before we knew it, $5.8
Billion dollars were collected in 2019!
Service Design: Healthcare
When people are sick…people and
medical service providers are separated
physically.
Goal: bring people and medical service
providers
together.
The health care industries face similar
challenges of airport luggage handling. How
do you bring people and medical service
providers together when people are sick?
Service Design: Healthcare
Several solutions are present to bring people
and doctors together:
Doctors make house calls, mobile clinic,
in-home care, midwife
Convalescent home/nursing home
HMO/PPO: patients go to clinics,
pharmacies, labs, hospitals…
Kaiser Permanente: patients go to this all
in one “department store”
Ambulance takes people to ER
Service Design: Restaurants
When people are hungry…people
and food are separated physically.
Goal: bring hungry people and food
together.
The food and restaurant industries face
similar challenges of airport luggage
handling. How do you bring food and
people together when people are
hungry?
Service Design: Problem and Solutions
When people are hungry…people
want to be united with food
In-house: go to market, buy raw food,
cook at home, eat
Outsourcing: go to a restaurant, eat
Service Design: Solutions
Outsourcing options:
Go to store, buy cooked food, eat
Order delivery by phone/computer
Go to restaurant (where food is) and
Order take out food
Sit down and self-serve food
Sit down and have other people bring food
Service Design: Alternatives
Service Design: Alternatives
Domino’s
Business
Model
Domino’s Around the World
New Service Designs
Think: Why didn’t Domino’s develop home delivery services
using their years of experience and existing delivery capabilities?
Sushi Restaurant
Auto Repair Shop Lounge
Bank Branch
Retail Banking
Consumption Trends
Experiences and experiential product spending are
on the rise. Experiential products are products used
to gain experiences, such as sports and outdoor
equipment. (e.g. RV sales)
A.T. Kearney 2017
study: America’s Next
Commercial Revolution:
Influence vs. Affluence
Discussion Questions
Please research the following questions and provide
evidence to support your answers.
Everyone: Describe the servicescape of a retail store you
like and explain why you like it. Please be comprehensive.
Everyone: Find an industry or a business where low and
high contact services are both used. What do you think
are the reasons both are offered? Which one do you
prefer and why?
Everyone: Is pumping gas a high or low contact system?
Will the gas delivery service like the one discussed in the
podcast work? Why or why not?
Group Discussion
Be sure your group is ready to lead and/or
discuss the following question in class, with
research or facts-based evidence.
There is a trend of turning high contact
services into lower contact to save costs. How
would you do it without letting customers feel
they are being neglected or short-changed?
How would you take it to a different level and
make customers “want” to use the low contact
service? Please use examples and references.
1
Group Discussions Guidelines
Group discussions should be submitted before the deadline every Wednesday with no
exceptions. There is a group discussion page in every PDF in the weekly folder in Canvas where
group discussion questions are shown. Please discuss these questions with your groupmates then
write it up in Canvas to turn it in. Please do NOT attach files. When a grade is given, everyone in
the group receives the same grade. Group may choose to answer additional questions or
comment on the course materials, in addition to the required answers.
Guidelines (grading rubric is in the end of this document):
Groups consist of 4 or 5 members. Please self organize into groups in Canvas. I do not
assign students into groups.
Group members should be as diverse as possible so that exposures to people who are very
different than you can be maximized for learning purposes.
Group members should meet on- and/or off-line to complete group discussions together,
rather than members divide and conquer the workload.
All primary and follow-up questions must be answered in full, with references to online
resources or class lectures/materials when necessary.
There should be a group consensus reached in the end of each question. If differences still
exist, lay out both sides of the argument.
Copying/pasting other people’s work without citing sources or receiving assistance from
other people is considered to be plagiarism and will result in a failing grade for the entire
group. Such violation of academic integrity will be reported to the University.
Groups should have a mechanism in place to ensure successful, timely submissions. No
late assignments will be accepted, no matter what the reason is and who is at fault.
Example (word count, research done well, relate to questions, complete story):
Group 8
Participating members: Ann Droid, Ira Oas, Sam Sung, Hua Wei
Question: What are the global supply chain activities involved in our examples of t‐shirts,
iPhones, and bananas? Please also explain one of the driving forces of the global supply chain
with examples.
Globalization offers companies opportunities to simultaneously increase revenues and decrease
costs. To use the T-Shirt example described as “The world behind a simple shirt” in NPR short
video, we explore the activities involved with raw materials (Cotton), supplier (Machines),
manufacturing (People), distribution (Boxes) and customer (You) in the global supply chain.
The T-shirt global supply chain activities start with the raw materials, mostly cotton grows in
Mississippi cotton farm in the US or other countries near the manufacturing. The U.S. exports
more cotton than any country in the world because their quality (color measure is high), price
and mass supply are very competitive and steady. In the video, for example, the farm produced
13,000 bales of cotton, the equivalent of 9.4 million T-shirts, in 2013.
The second activity, the spinning yarn and thread are made in the Indonesia yarn house where
they are provide all standardized size of fibers to satisfy with the T-shirt company’s designs.
Though spinning yarn is high tech and shockingly complex, it can be standardized to make yarn
with incredible precision and consistency, 24 hours a day, 361 days a year.
2
The next activity of manufacturing the T-Shirt happens in Bangladesh and Columbia. The buyer,
Jockey of the T-Shirt line said “there’s no country that’s ready to replace Bangladesh as the
cheapest place in the world to make clothes.” Nearly 19% of their population (4 million) work
for the garment industry, with an average monthly wage of $80 and long working hours.
With the activity of distribution (BOXES), the T-Shirts Line company’s get their final products
ready to ship by transporting from truck and ocean freight traveling around the world. When the
goods unload from the destination ports, the local shipping company will transport the goods to
the customer’s warehouses or distribution centers.
As a consumer to receive or buy the T-shirt, we are the last activity from this supply chain
activities.
As we perceived the t-shirt line supply chain in this video, a single T-shirt might start as US
cotton, then travel to Indonesia, Bangladesh and back to the U.S., all for far less than a dollar in
shipping costs. Thus, Supercheap transportation costs plays a key role that apparel companies
went from making clothes in one place to managing global supply chains.
One of the driving forces of the supply chain is technology (knowledge and technology flows).
With the advancement of technology, we have been able to transform the supply chain almost
overnight. With technology advancements, we’ve seen greater transparency across supply chains
from more accurate forecasting, better communication overall across functions, and even the
ability to view your bring your full business together. Lastly, technology has made it possible for
so much more innovation. Besides transparency and some of the basic functions that technology
enhances in the supply chain, it also makes way for automation and robotics to make the supply
chain leaner and “invisible”. It also makes way for sleeker on-demand delivery which has been
something that has completely transformed the supply chain in the past few years- such as Zara,
Fashionnova in fast fashion, and Amazon in making sure that the customer gets their products
the next day by storing merchant inventory so that it’s easy and fast to deliver.
Another driving force of global supply chain is “Global Market Forces” as international product
life cycle, demand for foreign products, multinomials for growth overseas.
Considering Apple’s iPhone for example, the value chain chart shows Apple has built a global
manufacturing and engineering infrastructure with facilities in California for product design and
marketing and service. Also, their R&D is in Germany; Material and parts procurement is in S.
Korean and Taiwan; assembly is in China and Distribution is in Japan. This network allows
Apple to introduce new products simultaneously in the American, European and Asian markets.
Companies use the state-of-the-art markets as learning grounds for product development, IP
management, effective production management, and then transfer this knowledge to their other
production facilities worldwide. With the integration of product design and the development of
related manufacturing processes, they become the key success factors, where fast product
introduction and extensive customization determine market success.
This logic also brings out another example of why BMW built assembly facility in the US,
located in Greer, South Carolina. The company recognizes that the United States is a large
market for its line up of cars and sport utility vehicles. In 2020, BMW is the 15th highest selling
brands in the US. Its manufacturing facilities in the U.S. allows them to offer American car
buyers a speedier delivery and its parent company more resistance to fluctuations and risks in
foreign exchange and customs duties.
References:
3
NPR “The world behind a simple shirt.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_supply_chain_management
https://www.obs-logistics.com/blog/how-technology-changed-supply-chain
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/three-game-changing-
supply-chain-technologies
Grading Rubric:
