About the Book

This book integrates key tools and processes into a comprehensive program for developing more robust and reliable technology-based products. Drawing on their extensive product development experience, the authors present a complete process for ensuring product performance throughout the entire lifecycle, from understanding customers' needs through manufacturing and post-launch support.

The authors begin by presenting broad insights and high-level strategies for improving product quality. Next, they demonstrate how to implement robustness and reliability strategies that complement existing governance and decision processes. A section on tools and methods shows how to institutionalize best practices and apply them consistently. Finally, they tie strategies, decisions, and methods together through a case study project.

Product developers will learn how to

• Understand critical drivers of value in technology products, including reliability and durability
• Implement a process model and roadmap for improving reliability and robustness
• Increase robustness early in development, leading to shorter cycle times in later phases
• Improve the stability of production performance under stress conditions
• Assess both organizational and process capabilities for delivering robust and reliable products
• Understand and manage customer-driven requirements
• Use tools including descriptive and inferential statistics and DOE-based empirical models

Managers will understand expectations for

• Design concepts supported by rigorous analyses of alternatives
• Products and processes delivering higher value to customers
• Products with higher reliability and longer useful lives
• Product processes with lower costs and higher capabilities
• Development projects having shorter, more predictable cycle times

Readers are introduced to many thought leaders whose writings can be sources of further learning. This book is a valuable resource for anyone responsible for delivering reliable, profitable technology products, including general managers, program managers, engineers, scientists, and reliability and quality professionals.

About the Author: John P. King has made contributions as an engineer, program manager, and laboratory head during a long career in product development and commercialization. His responsibilities have ranged from upstream R&D projects through commercialization and product launch. At Westinghouse, Xerox, Kodak, and Heidelberg Druckmaschinen, John worked as an engineer and manager in developing a wide range of products, including turbo machinery, office products, and medical imaging systems.

As a consultant, mentor, and trainer, John has helped clients worldwide improve both business processes and products. He has worked with project teams for both large and small companies and has written and delivered training programs to clients, followed by project mentoring to ensure the successful completion of their objectives.

John is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Society for Quality, the American Statistical Association, and the Society of Reliability Engineers. He holds a BME from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MS in Engineering Mechanics from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from Northeastern University.

Bill S. Jewett is a consultant to businesses engaged in the development of new technologies and multidisciplined products. With insights into important paradigms and advancements in practices, he assists improvement teams in upgrading their engineering and management processes, project management strategies, cross-functional teamwork, and governance of their development projects.

For many years Bill worked for Eastman Kodak Company and Heidelberg Druckmaschinen with much of his focus on the development of high-volume electrophotographic copiers and printers. Among his division-level responsibilities were the management of product development projects and of competency centers for mechanical and systems engineering. At the corporate level he was one of the authors of the processes for advanced product planning, technology development, product commercialization, and their related governance. For over a decade he taught the processes and coached teams in their adaptation and implementation. As the process steward, he evolved the process models to incorporate lessons learned from internal practice and external benchmarking.

Bill participates frequently in the conferences of PDMA, Management Roundtable, and INCOSE. He holds a BSME from Swarthmore College and an MBA from the University of Rochester.

The home page for Mr. Jewett and Mr. King is www.jewettking.com.