How to Develop Profitable Technology Products

Level: Introductory Length: 4 hours Format: In-Person Lecture Intended Audience: This course is intended for early-career scientists and engineers who are new to developing technology products, but anyone who wants to learn more about industry standard product development tools is invited to attend. Description: Product development is the exciting use of scientific knowledge to engineer a solution to a problem. Successful product development takes more than just strong technical skills, however. Successful products need to be scalable, reliable, and most of all, profitable. How do product development teams come together and turn science into things people need in an efficient and effective way? In this class you will learn some useful and proven systems and how to apply them at your own company. Learning Outcomes: This course will enable you to: - describe the 5 critical elements of a product (Definable, Scalable, Reliable, Viable, and Profitable) and be able to answer the question: “Do we have a product?” for their own company - explain the purpose and key elements of the Stage-Gate Product Development Process (PDP), and diagram a PDP for their own company - explain how a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) helps to identifying, prioritize, and mitigate product risks, and conduct an FMEA at their own company - outline the 8-Disciline (8D) approach to problem resolution and describe how this approach can be used to turn a customer issue in to an opportunity Instructor(s): David Giltner has spent his career commercializing new laser technology for companies such as JDS Uniphase, Ball Aerospace, and Zolo Technologies (now part of Koch Industries). His work in telecommunications and Datacom resulted in multiple successful products including the first cladding-pumped fiber laser device to be qualified to stringent Telcordia standards. Through this experience, David learned the value of the Product Manager role, a solid Product Development Process, and the One-Sheet System for coordinating product team activities. David has a BS and PhD in physics and holds six patents in the fields of laser spectroscopy and optical communications. Event: SPIE Photonics West 2019 Course Held: 04 February 2019