What’s More Important for a Product’s Success – Manufacturing or Product Design?

Pivot International  |   August 15, 2017

In some ways, the fields of manufacture and design are inextricable from one another. But as much as they are linked together in business, there are differences, which makes one wonder: Is there one that’s more important than the other?

Perhaps it sounds like a foolish question to ask, particularly since without both, it’s going to be impossible to create your product.

So perhaps this question itself is faulty. Perhaps it’s more appropriate to list the ways that each of them, manufacturing AND design, are vital to a product’s success.

Design

Without great design, a product is destined to fail. Without paying meticulous attention to every single detail of a product during its creation, your business is bound to end up manufacturing a product with serious flaws, whether they’re just visual or more central to the way a product functions.

Imagine finding out that the car you’re driving, or the home you’re living in, or the medical device you’re using had been rushed through the design process, or that flaws existed because of a poor concept.

Imagine how frightening that would be, no matter how solid the manufacturing process of that home or car or device had been. We discussed earlier how manufacturing is a central part of a business’ foundation; by extension, product design is the cornerstone of that foundation.

Design and engineering are inextricable from one another. Engineering is where the design theory meets the physical world; it’s where the possible and the impossible are separated. It’s where the idea is refined and reworked and improved over and over again.

The design and engineering processes are where high-quality products begin before they move on to the manufacturing phase to be perfected and sent out into the world.

Manufacturing

The importance of good manufacturing should be obvious. What good is a well-designed product that’s made poorly? There’s no point in working hard on the concept and creation of a product if the end result isn’t produced as well as it possibly could be.

Strength in every phase of the manufacturing process is essential. Everything from the supply chain to the workflow to the shipping and warehousing needs to be first-rate in order to create and sell a competitive product.

Quite simply, manufacturing is the heartbeat of your product. It’s the source from which everything else in the process flows, and nothing can be flawed within that process, or the entire system is at risk.

That’s one of the reasons that there have been so many innovations in the process of manufacturing over the last 50 years – with many more on the horizon. It’s such a vital part of a company’s health that people are constantly looking for ways to improve it, whether that’s through sustainable growth or automation or workspace evaluation or other types of analysis.

All of these processes are designed to help manufacturing not just grow, but grow healthily. There’s no denying that the manufacturing process has to be as efficient and cost-effective as possible because a company that makes any sort of product can’t exist successfully without it.

Manufacturing can occasionally overlooked because it is such a fundamental part of a business’ foundation that it can be taken for granted. But ignoring the manufacturing process is a mistake, because that’s where the inspiration meets the reality; it’s where the concept of a product leaves the drawing board and becomes real.

So in the end, these two phases of product creation can’t really be separated from one another, and there’s no way to say that one is worthy of more attention than the other. For true success, you’ve got to put your effort into the entire product development process, from start to finish.

For more on how to ensure your product’s success, read “How Logistics and Supply Chain Management Will Make or Break Your Business.”