Developing a new product

You typically begin the new product development process by capturing input requirements from customer specifications, standards, lessons learned, telephone conversations, user evaluation sessions, and many other sources. When you analyze these requirements, you may start to derive new requirements; for example, a functional requirement may derive design and manufacturing requirements. This can lead to an explosion of requirements in large systems—a single requirement may have thousands of derived requirements.

As you develop these requirements, you draft a list of features or functions that need to be built into the product. You may also discuss alternative ways of satisfying the requirements. As this list matures, you can create an initial functional model (decomposition or breakdown) of the system, followed by a logical model. You can then allocate functions to logical blocks. Later, when these models are sufficiently mature, you can create a physical model.

You should also consider other views of the system to ensure you can test it, manufacture it, support it in the field, and so on. You create relationships between these different views using trace links. A trace link creates a directional relationship between two objects. Trace links allow you to follow a path between an original requirement and the way it is satisfied in the product. For example, you can start with the requirement, and then identify how it is implemented in the product structure and how it is assembled in the manufacturing process plan.

The IEEE 1220 representation of the systems engineering process is shown in the following figure. Note that this process ends at the design verification stage, when design documents are released to design engineering. Depending on your working environment, you may consider the EIA 632 standard, which includes product validation and release process. Alternatively, ISO 15288 describes fully inclusive system life cycle processes.

(Figure: IEEE 1220 systems engineering process diagram — not reproduced)

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