ASSESSING THE IMPORTANCE OF DESIGN THROUGH PRODUCT ARCHAEOLOGY

This paper assesses the importance-of design in determining product co sts by measuring the variation in design performance among a set of co mpeting design efforts. This assessment is completed for a set of func tionally similar products in a single product category: automatic drip coffee makers, The approach of this study is to measure the manufactu ring content-the attributes of the design that drive cost-through anal ysis of the physical products themselves, and to estimate how variatio n in manufacturing content relates to variation in cost in a hypotheti cal manufacturing setting. We call this approach product archaeology. For the domain of coffee makers, we find significant variation in manu facturing content. This variation in manufacturing content corresponds to a range of estimated manufacturing casts, for a hypothetical manuf acturing system, of approximately 50 percent of the average manufactur ing cost of the products, We also find that differences in capabilitie s among product-development efforts are the most plausible explanation for the differences in manufacturing content.