User testing is the next big step

Over the past several months, we have dissected the product realization process. We are now at the point where the design objectives appear to have been met: Our product or service has been designed to meet the expectations of the user; the design meets all necessary code requirements; reviews of the design have been done by all of the appropriate management levels and then some.

What comes next?

Building a small quantity of the product or releasing the service, to test it in the marketplace. I don't mean have engineers test it. By this point, the design engineering group will know everything there is to know about your device. Even the technicians involved with the project will know too much about how the device works to be able to test it properly and find the flaws that may prove undesirable.

Although there will be engineering tests that need to be done to confirm reliability and performance, the big test program now has to be user testing. Ideally, even the reliability and performance testing should be out of the hands of the design and development engineers.

The code compliance auditing organizations will get their first crack at your product. They will make sure that the product does, in fact, meet the code compliance and safety standards. In some instances, the code compliance auditors will even try to make the product fail.

End users should get a chance to try the final version of your product. It is less costly to make corrections after a few dozen or even a few hundred systems have been produced, than it is to recall millions after going headlong into production with a flawed design.

A good example of this type of failure in the product realization process is the situation that Bridgestone-Firestone Tire Co., Ford Motor Co. and others are finding themselves in today. The people who made certain decisions more than six years ago are now finding that some of the technical assumptions used to make those decisions were not valid. Consequently, there is a big scramble with an associated clamor to determine who is at fault.

According to the information available today, dozens of people have died and more have been injured, not just in the United States but in other countries, because one or more considerations in the product realization process were not properly evaluated.

From the standpoint of the engineer, we must all learn from this experience, identify the root causes and resolve not to allow it to reoccur by implementing the necessary changes to the product realization process.

If this situation had been properly identified before the product was released, just think about the savings that would have been realized, not just in dollars, but, more importantly, in terms of human lives.

In the next several months, I will be ending this discussion, as we look forward to a successful test program.

— Niel Leon
Committee on Engineering
Entrepreneurship
leonn@asme.org

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