BA 296-3 and ME290P
Fall 1996

Managing the New Product Development Process: Design Theory and Methodology

GENERAL INFORMATION

Teaching Staff:

Prof. Alice Agogino, Room 5136 Etcheverry Hall, x2-6450, aagogino@euler.berkeley.edu

Dr. Sara L. Beckman, Room F575 Haas School, 2-1058, beckman@haas.berkeley.edu

Andy Dong, Teaching Assistant, 6102 Etcheverry Hall, x38146, adong@jerry.me.berkeley.edu.

Class Meetings:

Wednesdays and Fridays, 9:30 - 11:00 p.m., Room Cheit 110

Course Objectives:

This course is aimed at developing the interdisciplinary skills required for successful product development in today's competitive marketplace. We expect students to be disciplinary experts in their own fields (e.g., engineering, business). By bringing together multiple perspectives, we will learn how product development teams can focus their efforts to quickly create cost-effective products that exceed customers' expectations.

Expectations:

This is a three-unit graduate course. Accordingly, we have designed the course to demand approximately 12 hours per week of your time. We expect that each student will prepare for and attend all of the class sessions and will participate fully on a project team. Our experience with project-based design courses is that students often develop high expectations for their projects and devote substantially more time than it required by the instructors. We applaud this enthusiasm, but will not penalize students who establish a twelve hour per week average time constraint for their efforts. We have tried to smooth the workload for the course, so that it will remain relatively constant throughout. We appreciate your feedback on this, however, as we work through the material this semester.

Academic Integrity:

We encourage full group and class collaboration on all aspects of this course. It is almost impossible to share too much information in product development. We do expect that all team members will contribute substantially to the project efforts, although some students will choose to devote themselves to the projects beyond what is required for the course.

Reading Materials:

The primary reading material for the class is the textbook Product Design and Development written by Karl Ulrich and Steve Eppinger. This book is a very basic text that provides a step by step view of how new product development processes are to be conducted. A course reading packet, that will supplement the book, is also available for purchase at the UC Bookstore. Handouts of additional readings will be distributed in class.

Grading:

Your course grade will be determined as follows:

30% quality of your preparation for and participation in class discussions

20% quality of your individual assignment solutions

30% quality of your team's work on project-related assignments

20% quality of your team's final project presentation

Class Preparation and Participation:

Reading assignments are given in the class schedule for each class session. We expect you to come to class prepared to discuss the readings and the suggested questions. Your individual class participation grade will be based upon your in-class remarks during discussions.

Individual Assignments:

We have periodically assigned exercises at the back of the chapters. We will provide more detail as to our expectations for turning in these exercises.

Projects:

The goal of this exercise is to learn principles and methodologies of product development in a realistic context. Most product development professionals work under tremendous time pressure and do not have an opportunity to reflect on the development process. In this course, the project stress level will be low enough so that there will be time to experiment and learn. We will provide additional instruction as to the nature of the project in the second week of the course.

Project Teams:

In the second week of the course, we will form project teams. Teams should consist of 4-6 students representing a cross-section of engineering and MBA students.

Last updated: 27 November 1996 by Alice Agogino