05 June 2024
Product engineering is a phase of product development in which engineering principles and practices are applied to a product lifecycle. The process includes design, development, testing and optimization.
Product engineering can refer to software engineering or the design of new products like electronics, industrial equipment, or automobiles. Regardless of the end product, product engineering involves a multidisciplinary approach. This can mean combining aspects of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering, and other relevant fields to create innovative and high-quality products.
Successful product engineering delivers products that not only meet functional and technical requirements but provide elevated user experiences and complement an organization’s overarching business strategy. It is often useful for an organization to systematize the product engineering process, outlining a detailed roadmap and designating product managers to ensure a timely and cost-effective process. This will help an organization maximize a product’s value for its entire lifecycle.
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While product engineering and product development are closely related terms that are occasionally used interchangeably, they refer to distinct processes. The product development process encompasses the full, non-technical undertaking of creating a new product and involves post-launch activities like marketing and sales. Product engineering is more limited in scope. Typically, it focuses on engineering functions like technical specifications, materials, manufacturing, and the integration of technologies or software. While both processes are crucial for the successful creation and launch of a new product, product engineering is a specialized subset of the broader product development framework.
The product engineering process involves collaboration between various teams and stakeholders to ensure the successful development and delivery of the final product. The makeup of this team can vary depending on the organization and nature of the product. Commonly involved team members can include:
This could include software engineers and developers, a quality assurance team who performs testing and validation, or hardware engineers (e.g., mechanical engineers) who work on the physical aspects of product design.
Executive leadership may be involved to provide overall direction, support, and resources for product development.
Procurement specialists and the finance team may collaborate with the product engineering team. These specialists help to ensure the most high-quality materials are used in the product development process and that those materials comply with the project’s budget.
Depending on the product, legal council or compliance specialists may be required to ensure the product complies with relevant laws and regulations.
Product managers are responsible for defining the organizational roadmap and product strategy.
While there is no single product engineering roadmap that will apply to all organizations, there are some central elements that are typically included in an agile and systematic process.
These phases ensure that a product is intelligently designed and built with both business requirements and the end user in mind. Testing, iteration, validation, and continuous monitoring of outcomes ensures innovation is balanced with technical feasibility and budgetary considerations. Given the complexity of the product engineering process, some organizations may elect to contract an experienced third-party firm specializing in product engineering services or project management to streamline the undertaking.
As with product design, product engineering begins with brainstorming and the conceptualization of product ideas. While engineers typically don’t engage in market research themselves, during this development phase they might work to translate abstract concepts like customer needs into tangible product specifications, considering the role of product, technical feasibility, time-to-market, and other external demands. This phase might also include the gathering of in-depth data, identifying system requirements, and outlining functionalities.
Once an idea is finalized, engineers begin the design phase in which they create detailed wireframes, specifications, drawings, and models of the product. This phase might include the use of CAD (computer-aided design) tools to develop two-dimensional and three-dimensional models. Engineers design and build prototypes, which are built and tested to validate the product before it moves to full-scale production. Multiple prototypes might be built to assist in difficult problem-solving processes. In software engineering, engineers might define the overall system architecture of the product during this phase.
As the product is being designed, or shortly after the final prototype is approved, the design team and engineering team collaborates with procurement specialists to plan how the end product will be constructed. During this time, engineers make crucial decisions about the selection of materials and the manufacturing process. Considering factors such as cost, scalability, durability, and sustainability, engineers and their team members make a detailed plan for mass production.
As technology has advanced, it’s become more common for products to involve a combination of hardware and software components. The final product might be a piece of software itself, or require a separate software product engineering process to ensure seamless integration with a piece of hardware. Ideally, the design and prototyping phase would have included plans for the integration of various technologies to create a cohesive and functional product.
During the product testing phase, engineers stridently evaluate the product to ensure it meets the predefined specifications and requirements — this can include testing for performance, reliability, safety, scalability, and usability. As part of the testing process, quality assurance (QA) measures are implemented to ensure the product can meet or exceed industry standards and consumer expectations. Validation processes might include testing automation or performance testing, depending on the product designed.
In an ideal product engineering workflow, development and testing is an ongoing process rather than an end state. During the design phase, engineers may have planned for future updates and maintenance. Ongoing testing and monitoring key metrics is crucial to ensuring the product is performing as intended. For some organizations, investing in ongoing iteration may be the most appropriate course of action after the product launches. This could mean designing and deploying updates, collecting and filtering user feedback, or dedicating an engineering team to continuously monitor the product’s performance.
- Competitive advantage: A systematized and informed product engineering process can result in goods or services that exceed customer expectations and create a competitive edge in the market.
- Cost efficiency: Through careful selection of materials and manufacturing processes—and the optimization of system architecture and design—product engineers can achieve cost efficiency without compromising on quality. By identifying issues before they arise and working continuously to improve the product, engineers can reduce costs.
- High-quality products: Product engineers optimize the design of a product, focusing on creating efficient consumer goods with the best possible functionality and performance. This results in more durable and reliable products with a high degree of usability.
- Increased innovation: Product engineering facilitates innovation by encouraging creative solutions to design and manufacturing challenges, applying new technologies, materials, and approaches to the development of novel products.
- Regulatory compliance: The product engineering process ensures that the final product complies with all relevant regulations, standards, and safety requirements.
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