Essay: two questions

Question 1

There are many different types of risks that may occur in a high-tech product development project, such as the development of new medical equipment.  For example, a new medical equipment development may fail to gain acceptance among today’s MD users because of evident operational complexities and high cost maintenance procedures. Moreover, a new medical equipment development may be terminated during the trial stage because of improper operations based on weak project leadership or insufficient performance measurements. In addition, new medical equipment development may fail in the market because of the user-unfriendliness or because of competitiveness of the product.

Question 2

High-tech product development can be easily mitigated by developing and implementing the appropriate flexible development procedures that will provide rapid adjustment in product development decisions through the following methods: continuous knowledge learning and prompt feedback.

In addition, it is possible to develop and implement an early warning system in order to detect the type of risks discussed in question 1. For example, it would be better to provide testing product feasibility at the early stage. It is known that “traditionally, the crucial product viability tests, such as system integration, market acceptance, flight tests, and automobile crash tests, were performed toward the end of the development cycle” (Thamhain 313). Medical equipment tests also were performed at the end of the developmental process. However, today, due to the development of modern computer and information technologies, it is possible to advance testing of new medical equipment to the very early stages of new product development process. The following techniques can be effectively used to avoid the above mentioned risks: the use of computer-aided design, computer-aided engineering, and computer-aided manufacturing, simulations, emulations, and modeling of products in their final application environment” (Thamhain 313). This testing can help to detect evident operational complexities of the new medical equipment. In addition, it is recommended to simplify the product design in order to attract more MD users and promote competitiveness of the product in the market.