Customer Reviews

Product Design: Techniques in Reverse Engineering and New Product Development

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This is the book those of us teaching product design in universities have been waiting for. I can't think of any area of product design and development that Otto and Wood haven't covered, and in real depth. I teach a course in product design at Ohio State, and this will be the book we'll use from now on. I especially appreciate the extensive references, and the emphasis placed on looking at real products to learn how to design better products. The chapter on product architecture is really a godsend - these are concepts that most engineering students don't run into in the standard curriculum, but they're crucial to sound product development. In short, an amazingly useful book, and one that will certainly be around for a long time to come.

I have used the text in a graduate design course at the University of Texas at Austin. This is a great book for engineers and engineering students who seek an understanding of proper design fundamentals and useful design tools. Emphasis throughout the book is placed on application of systematic and repeatable methods as opposed to ad hoc approaches. The book reads well and has sufficient depth for those interested in more than an overview of what design is about.

The book is a comprehensive reference of design methodologies and techniques that are useful to both students and experienced designers. It has a wide range of approaches and a wealth of real world examples that illustrate and motivate the techniques. A worth while investment. The golden nuggets at the end of each chapter help the reader digest the reading, or if needed help the reader extract the high points of a chapter.

Typically a graduate coming from a university is expected to work on product development. However, engineering institutions typically do not teach full product design cycle and associated concepts which can prepare these engineers for developing a product using some proven techniques. Even knowing the options in various tools and technique is lacking sometimes. This book is a master piece and answer to those questions. At first it looks like a reverse engineering book but it contains range of novel treatments from NPD perspective. The book is organized in 19 chapters of high value concepts in regard to contemporary product design processes and tools.
Not in congruence with its title, book covers a great deal of team formation aspect in detail and also provides insight on various personality types which composes the teams. Chapter 4 covers use of various tools like affinity diagram to prioritize customer needs. The book goes onto establish the knowledge base on how to convert customer needs into product function using techniques of activity diagram and function structures. Great deal is covered on process of benchmarking usually not available in other books to precise details. Use of house of quality is highlight of this treatment in context of product design. The chapters on developing product architectures, generating concepts and selecting best concepts has been explained with some of the superb examples.
Engineering professionals will find real good value out of DFX chapters which pertains to design for manufacturing, design for assembly, and design for environment and design for robustness / reliability. The most valuable understanding which I got from this book is - looking at solution from analytical and numerical modeling perspective.
Written by Otto and wood of MIT and University of Texas respectively, the book is a masterpiece of engineering education as practiced in actual companies. The book is must read by product development professionals and provides the needed practical aspect and issues of product development. There is only one chapter on reverse engineering, more appropriately the book should be called as new product development book.

At the risk of being overly dramatic, If you buy no other book for new product development, buy this one. Whether you are just building a new product development process or trying to step up to Design for Six Sigma, Kevin Otto's book describes a clear process and the right tools at the right time. As a Chief Engineer or R&D V.P. this is a must for your toolkit.

Joe Sener, V.P. Business Excellence
Baxter International

I am currently using this book. I have found this book to be the excellent book I have ever come across. The way of expressing concepts, starting from motivation till golden nuggets - summary helps me to understand methodology in comprehensive and logical manner. The book has covered almost all concepts of product design in detail. The applications of eletcric wok, rocket, nail clipper and others spread all over book helps to understand those methodologies easily. I am happy about book. An excellent student satisfaction for all those who want to study product design under one roof of this book. Thanks to Dr Wood and Dr Otto !

I have a working copy of this book that was given to me while taking the product design course at the University of Texas. The book would probably be a lot better if it had a good index, but since it was thrown together to give the class something to read, it doesn't. I didn't use the book much for class, but have used it some since then. This book uses design tools that are good in theory, but sometimes take too long to actually be used in a real situation (i.e. QFD).