Design Realization/Detailed Design - Medical Device Design: Innovation from Concept to Market - page 152

CHAPTER 8

Design Realization/Detailed Design

8.1 Introduction
In many design textbooks you will find this called embodiment . I find that term to be
confusing to most people. More often than not the topics let you decide what to do, as if the
design happens by magic. The actual phase we are in is like taking a bunch of ingredients
from a cupboard and making a meal; we have asked what everyone wants to eat and now we
have to make the dinner.

All of the previous chapters were concerned with taking an individual concept and distilling
it down to a single, describable idea. This chapter is about taking that idea and making it
“make-able.” There is an old saying: “Any fool can make a bolt for $100, it takes an engineer
to make it for 1 cent.”

This is now the phase of the game that we have entered. We need to take disparate concepts
and assemble them as a whole; we need to make sure it can be made; we need to ensure it can
be put together; we need to ensure it will withstand the loadings placed upon it; and we need
to make sure it works. Hence this chapter aims to present tools and techniques that enable you
to “ realize ” your design and make it real.

8.2 The Process to Design Realization
This is hard to quantify as different disciplines and different designs will have their own
individual variations. Figure 4.5 in Chapter 4 illustrated a typical detailed design procedure;
yours may be different than the one illustrated, but whatever the complexity or simplicity they
all follow a general pattern:

1. Macro design realization project plan: identify subprojects and estimate timescales.

2. Assemble design team: identify who you need to help you with the design and get them

on board.

3. Micro plan: for each subproject, plan and confirm timescales.

4. Delivery of individual subprojects to timescale.

5. Delivery of overall design realization.

Let us look at these in more detail. But before we do, let us not forget that each one of
these little design projects involves a PDS, a creative phase to determine alternatives, and a