Himanshu Saraf
ESSAY III
The Palm sized, pen based computer that Hawkins plan to bring to market in early 90’s was entirely new to market and first of all Hawkins should do a initial market research to estimate potential demand for his visionary product. This assessment should be used to select the potential market segment and market needs the product will serve so as to meet and serve greatest need. The forecasting of market potential can be based on performance of similar less advanced products or population based estimate methods can be used.
Once Market potential has been assessed, Hawkins should define the project scope in detail (project objectives, profitability and introduction date). Formation of development team should be the next step. The role of development team should be to generate product concept that will address the question of how this new product will meet the needs of various stakeholders such as production, design, shipping to end user. Development team should build a list of all the key features that stakeholders want to see in the product and drop off all the ideas that are too complex. Once all the information from stakeholders has been gathered, it can be assigned relative and absolute weight to ensure design tradeoff decisions can be made. This will help to build a better product.
Once this step is over, team should be able to illustrate the product concept, its technical features, design and manufacturing process. This will help the team to move forward in the development process. The concept should also be checked for internal and external product integrity. This is to ensure that product attracts and satisfies customers.
Once a concept has been finalized, team should focus on product engineering and design. The engineering team should be in concert with design team to develop a product which is appealing to all stakeholders. Develop a working prototype to test the feasibility of the design and collect feedbacks from stakeholders to improve the design and key features. Once final design has been selected, it should be sent to factory for pilot production to confirm the assembly, test and other operational procedures used in full scale production. At this point, all equipment for large scale production should be in place.
Once product has been developed and ready to hit market, next step is to make a sales and marketing plan for the device.
Since pen based computers are new to market, adding large sales force too early in launch until product has been completely adopted by market,