Design of goods and services in operations management

¶ … product life cycle apply to Regal Marine products?

The entire value chain and business model of Regal Marine is predicated on keeping pace with the product lifecycle the company has across each category of boat or marine craft. As the product lifecycles are between three to five years, there is a constant, urgent need to continually create new product concepts and quickly transform them into prototypes for testing and eventually, new products. Like many manufacturers, Regal Marine must take into account the suppliers that provide the raw materials, subcomponents and assemblies that comprise their new boats while also factoring in the design inputs of customers, consultants and dealers. All of these inputs need to be captured and prioritized in the context of the new boat design.

The new product development and introduction process, which many companies integrate as part of their agile manufacturing strategy (Vinodh, Kuttalingam, 2011) is also being used by Regal to streamline the new product definition and development process. For Regal and their competitors, time-to-market is crucial for their success, as is the focus on creating high quality, reliable boats which their dealers, distributors and end customers trust to perform as promised. All of the factors included in the new product development and introduction process need to be orchestrated in order for the highest quality boat to be produced, at the lowest cost, aligned as closely as possible to customers' needs. If these three needs can be triangulated, any product stands a much greater chance of success. For Regal, their pipeline must be continually fed with new products, concepts and boats in various stages of development if the company is to continually stay competitive and earn a profit over time.

What strategy does Regal use to stay competitive?

Regal uses a series of strategies to stay competitive, starting with a series of design cycles or steps for ensuring each boat that is part of their broader product line is precisely designed for accuracy, reliability and security. Those points are inherent in the approach the company takes to integrating Computer-Aided Design (CAD) data into the broader series of systems and strategies used for constructing boats. The company is also open to taking design, boat interiors and hull style considerations from customers, consultants and dealers. This approach to capturing requirements is often called Voice of the Customer (VoC) research and is typically included as part of the Six Sigma program at manufacturers (Rosenbaum, Postula, 1991).

What kind of benefits are Regal achieving by using CAD technology rather than traditional drafting techniques?