Design for Supportability: Essential Component of New Product Development

OVERVIEW:During new product development, R&D engineers consider a wide range of often conflicting requirements, including product features, cost, quality, and manufacturability. Another factor, which companies often neglect, is to ensure that products are easy and economical to service and support—i.e., to install, to maintain, to repair, to operate, etc. Product support is essential for achieving customer satisfaction in many industries, including high-tech sectors such as computing as well as “low-tech” sectors such as domestic appliances and the like. Leading companies recognize both the importance of product support and the significance of evaluating support requirements at the design stage by using Design for Supportability techniques. This enables them to gain competitive advantage from customer support and earn significant revenues.