The designer as 'gatekeeper' in

manufacturing industry Vivien Walsh

Department ofManagementSciences, UMIST, Manchester, UK

Robin Roy

Design Discipline, Faculty of Technology, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

For the past three years the Design Innovation Group at the Open University in collaboration with Vivien Walsh at UMIST has been examining the processes, practices and management of product design, development and innovation in several sectors of manufacturing industry.

This paper presents some of the findings, in particular flora the survey of the plastics products sector, but with additional evidence fiom a preliminary analysis of data in the office furniture, domestic heating equipment and electronic business equipment industries.

The focus of the paper is on the employment and activities of product designers and their role as 'gatekeepers', who, in the commercially successful, 'design-conscious" firms, manage to integrate the contributions of marketing, design and production in new product development.

The paper also includes some evidence on the relationship between 'good design' and business performance.

Keywords: design philosopy, manufacturing, plastics

Thomas J Allen coined the term 'technological gatekeepers 'l'z to describe the key individuals in research and development laboratories who bring outside in- formation into the organization and act as a focus for communication within it. During the 1970s, manage- ments in some industrial laboratories began to identify such gatekeepers, and use them to improve the cross- fertiliTation of ideas within the laboratory 3, an activity also recommended by management textbooks 4.

The results of some research carried out by the authors suggest that in commercially successful firms with a reputation for producing well-designed products the role of 'gatekeeper' is often played by designers. In this case, the meaning of gatekeeper differs slightly from Allen's, in that the information gathering and disseminating is not just scientific or technological. Yet the essential role, of a focus of information, is very similar.

Thus, the 'good designer' is not just good at design in the sense of producing something which is visually appealing and does what it is supposed to do efficiently. He or she acquires and incorporates the necessary knowledge of what customers want, what can be most efficiently produced and what best fits in with the company's other products, corporate planning and im- age. The designer also acts as an integrating focus for the interaction between staff in other departments in the organization.

THE DESIGN INNOVATION GROUP PROJECT

The project began in 1980, at the Open University, and has been financed by several grants. Its original remit

Vol 6 No 3 July 1985 0142-694x/85/03127-07 $03.00 © 1985 Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd 127

was to investigate the importance of design as a factor in the competitiveness of British manufacturers and to survey 'best practice' in the firms which were successful in design and commercial terms. We have interviewed managers and designers in over 100 UK and foreign firms in several industrial sectors, including plastics products 5 (e.g. housewares, toys), bicycles 6, motor cars 7, office furniture, domestic heating equipment and electro- nic business equipment (e.g. word processors) s. The sectors have been chosen to cover industries with a wide range of technological and design intensities, ages, sizes and structures. In each sector, British firms were under increasing pressure from international competition, in both export markets and the home market. However, in each sector there were also a number of British firms which had managed to be successful in design and business terms, against the general trend. We also visited nine world-leading firms in Japan, Canada, Sweden, Denmark and Holland for comparative purposes. We measured 'success' in design terms by the winning of design awards of various kinds, while business success was measured using indicators such as capital growth, turnover growth, profit margin and return on capital over a seven year period, calculated from published company returns.

The interviews are completed, but data is still being analysed for several of the sectors. Accordingly, this paper will concentrate on evidence gathered from the plastics products sector which is nearest to completion, though-mentioning for comparison preliminary findings from some of the other sectors.

DOES GOOD DESIGN PAY?

One of the key questions addressed in the project was 'does good design increase the chances of business success?' This is a very difficult question to answer because of the problems of defining both 'good design' and 'business success', but there are some interesting initial pointers from the plastics products sector and from an initial analysis of data in the other sectors.

For the plastics sector we selected a sample of firms randomly from those in scope to the Rubber and Plastics Processing Industry Training Board (firms with plastics processing as their main business activity). These firms were taken as representative of the UK plastics industry as a whole. We also selected a number of finns with a reputation for good design, which had won design awards of various kinds, for example, one of the annual Design Council Awards for 'design excellence', a listing in the Design Centre Selection of well-designed British goods or a relevant industry award. We called the two samples the 'representative' firms and the 'design- conscious' firms. The design-conscious plastics firms all performed better than the representative firms in terms of return on capital, profit margin, turnover growth and capital growth (see Figure 1). Although the difference in profit margin is likely to have occurred by chance, the other differences were statistically more significant. In

43% .g

g

~ 11%

Return on Profit margin Turnover capital growth

19%

Capital growth

i Representative sample (28 or 31 firms for which data was aveileble with one major Iossmaking firm removed)

D Design-conscious sampte (eight firms)

Figure 1. Business performance of the plastics firms 1973-79

particular the design-conscious firms performed signifi- cantly better in turnover growth over the period 1973-79 (with only a 4% probability of the difference being due to chance, on the Mann Whitney 'U' test*). Turnover growth is likely to be a more realistic measure of company success through good design than measures involving profits. An earlier publication 9 discusses in more detail the development of these indicators and their limitations.

Preliminary analysis of the data for the office furni- ture~ domestic heating and electronic business equip- ment sectors indicates a statistically significant positive association (using a chi-square test t) between two indicators of design performance and two indicators of business performance, as shown in Table 1. However, there appear to be no statistically significant associations between the two measures of design success shown in Table 1 and other indicators of business performance, such as return on capital, turnover, capital and profit growth.

Work is continuing to measure the relationships between design success and business performance in these other sectors.

WHAT FIRMS MEAN BY 'DESIGN'

What we mean by the term 'design' is rather fundamental in a project about design. However, everyone has a slightly different meaning for the word. The Design Innovation Group has developed a working definition of 'design' as the creation of a particular configuration of elements, materials and components that give a product its attributes of function, appearance, durability, and so on 1°.

We asked firms how they det-med design and a variety

** Details of these and other statistical tests may be found in, for example, Seigal, S Non-parametric Statistics for the Be- havioural Sciences, McGraw-Hill, Kogakusha, Tokyo (1956)

128 DESIGN STUDIES

Table 1. Relationship between design performance & business performance in office furniture, domestic heating & electronic business equipment sectors (Sample: 42 UK and nine foreign firms)

Net no. times a firm's products Total no. awards, prizes etc for were cited on Design Centre good design won by firm: Selection: pre-1976 to 1982 pre-1976 to 1982

Profit margin(Profitdturnove~: 1976to1982 X X

Export sMedtotal turnover: 1982 X 0

X = Significant association (on chi-square test) 0 = No significant association

of answers was given. Figure 2 shows the types of answer given by the plastics firms.

In contrast to the representative firms, who tended to define design in terms of shape and appearance alone, design-conscious plastics firms defined design very broadly, in terms of several factors. Their views of design indicated an awareness (implicitly if not explicitly) of a 'gatekeeper' role for the designer, who is more than a technician or stylist. For example, considerations of efficiency in production or use of materials, and making something that will sell or make a profit were mentioned by 50% and 63% of the design-conscious plastics firms respectively.

Similarly in other sectors, there was a constrast between firms who interpreted design as a broad integrative activity and those with a much narrower view (see Table 2). In the office furniture sector, for example, we found definitions of design ranging from, 'it's all about fashion' to, 'design is a very broad term encompas- sing concept design, styling, production engineering etc. The design department is the place where everything has to be considered. The operation of the design department is dependent on the company pulling together.'

INTEGRATION BETWEEN DESIGN AND OTHER DEPARTMENTS

Close collaboration between design and production staff was usual in all firms with heavy investment in manufac- turing technology, especially in the heating equipment sector. However, in less capital-intensive firms, it was often the case that, either products were designed which did not exploit the potential of efficient manufacturing methods, or the design would be changed at a late stage in response to criticisms from the production staff, thus increasing the development costs and perhaps reducing the lead time and profitability of the new product.

We also heard several examples of product failures resulting from inadequate market intelligence. In each case, the firm said the product design was good but it was not quite what customers wanted or could be persuaded to buy. One heating In'm, for example, developed a multi-solid fuel domestic boiler, but aban- doned the project when it became clear that most users would fred fuel storage impractical. Firms which had this experience had usually responded by ensuring increased liaison between marketing and design staff.

100% .==

i

~o o~

Shape, visual appearance

75% 66%

Ergonomics, fitness for use

63%

22%

Increased value, making products

that sell or make a profit

~ Representative sample (41 firms)

*Several firms mentioned more than one meaning of design

5O%

Efficiency in production or

usa of materials

'---! Design-conscious sample (eight firms)

25% 25% 25% 1 ~ 1 ~ ~

Fasion Durability Safety coordination with range

Figure 2. How plastics firms defined design

Vol 6 No 3 July 1985 129

Table 2. How firms in different industry sectors defined 'design'

Office furniture o 'Straightforward solution to a problem in a functional

and aesthetically pleasing way' • 'Design is not a packaging exercise; it is the analysis of

the real needs of what the customer wants added to how we can made it'

Domestic heating equipment o 'The creation of new ideas' • 'Literally everything from idea to production, includ-

ing brochures and installers's manuals'

Electronic business equipment o 'Design is the overall concept for the product' • 'Design encompasses product specification through

detailed hardware and software design . . . Design has a global role in the company. There's no dividing line between marketing and design. Creativity lies in integrating available components in a new way'

o - Narrowspan view of design in the firm • = Broadspan integrative view of design in the firm

Thus the successful design-conscious firms typically had designers who took account of, and acted on, production technology and marketing information at an early stage of the design/development process and did not leave considerations of marketability and production efficiency to the staff in those departments. They were more market and production-conscious, as well as more design-conscious, than representative firms.

The foreign firms in particular were much more likely than their British competitors deliberately to gather market information for product planning and design and to obtain customer reactions to prototypes of new products before finalizing a design for manufacture.

WHO ARE THE DESIGNERS ?

The role of designers is strongly influenced by their position and status in the firm, and the attitude to design of the management and other staff. The Corfield Report ~ l said that designers typically have low status and are relatively badly paid in British industry. It also said that design should be a board-level responsibility.

Table 3. Status of designers in different industry sectors. Sample: 42 UK firms employing between 25 and 2 000 people

In our survey, we found much variation between sectors in the status of design, as well as between design-conscious and representative firms. In the electro- nic business equipment sector, for example, over 90% of the firms sampled had someone qualified in design or technology on the board and in 60%, responsibility tbr product design lay with a board member, usually the chief executive. In the heating sector, in contrast, the corresponding figures were 50% and 37% (see "Fable 3). This is partly because the heating firms were generally concerned more with development, testing and produc- tion engineering than with new product design, but also because the heating firms were generally much larger.

Firms which regularly won awards for the design of their products were often run by qualified designers or had designers in senior positions. For example, lhc person responsible for design in the design-conscious plastics firms would typically be a senior manager with access to, or membership of, the board of directors. This seniority would affect the attitude of other staff to designers, and would affect what the designers could do, by giving prominence to the design function.

It was not surprising to find that all the design- conscious plastics firms thought design very important; but 63% of the representative plastics firms also thought so and employed specialist staff for design and develop- ment (see Figure 3). The difference was that all the design-consicous firms had a positive corporate stategy of growth based on moving upmarket by making well- designed, high value products and had a commitment to good design at the most senior levels of the firm and throughout the firm. Only 20°/,, of the representative plastics firms had this kind of strategy, while a substan- tial minority (15%) thought design was not an activity worth much time, effort or money (see Figures 3 and 43.

Most firms in the other sectors employed specialist design staff although some did not; they relied on people with other jobs in the firm to do design or they may have employed outside design consultants. In the office furniture sector only 76% of the firms had full-time, inhouse designers, whereas all the heating and electronic business equipment firms employed full-time design/ development staff. It was not surprising theretore that a higher percentage of office furniture firms used external

Electr- Office Domestic onic furni- heating business

ture % equip- % ment

Is someone qualified in Yes 58 50 9 l design or technology on the company board? No 42 50 9

Is a board member Yes 47 37 55 responsible for product design and development No 53 63 45

130 DESIGN STUDIES

o

w

22%

s l 5% J

Design Design imPortant, not important but clone by people

with other tasks

U Representative sample 141 firms)

[ ~ Design-con=cious sample (eight firms)

100%

63~

Design very important; specialist design staff employed

Figure 3. Attitude to design of plastics firms consultants for design than the heating firms (Table 4). Electronic business equipment firms, however, also frequently employed consultants as well as full-time, inhouse designers, using the consultants mainly for industrial design tasks.

The employment of specialist design staff did not necessarily mean a commitment to good design, nor their absence a lack of it. It was very much a question of size. Thus, smaller firms often bought in expertise if they did not have it inhouse; or the owner/manager might have been a qualified designer who set up in business to exploit his or her ideas and who therefore had managerial tasks besides design to carry out. Nevertheless, in all the design-conscious plastics firms at least 2-3% of staff were full-time, qualified or experienced product designers and many firms also retained well-known design consultants. Most representative plastics firms employed under 2% of staff qualified in any discipline, while very few employed full-time design engineers or industrial designers.

In all sectors there appear to be a minority of firms with a very casual attitude to design. A few office furniture firms regarded design as a relatively trivial matter. In one such firm all product design was done by

g

g

c

o

o

.g_

100%

High value products*

63%

Diversify Automate range production

Expansion strategyt

• J i Representative sample (41 firms)

" ~ Design-conscious sample (eight firms)

"i.e. 'upmarket' products with a hi~l velue/unit weight achieved through gnlater design effort and/or higher quality Polymers tSeverll firms in the Oacign-conscious wmple simultammusly persued more then one major stnztagy for expansion

4 2 %

I None

Figure 4. Strategies for expansion adopted by the plastics firms

the chairman who commented. 'It's not really design. We buy in our competitor's products, strip them down and something emerges from that.'

Some managers in plastics firms did not appear to be aware of design being carried out at all or said they drew something 'on the back of a cigarette packet' and gave it to the toolmaker, who made the mould accordingly. Thus the toolmaker would be the designer by default. This would usually mean that the product would be designed for ease of mould operation (for example, with rounded corners to help it drop out of the mould) and for production efficiency, which would be an advantage. The disadvantage would be that considerations of customers' requirements, ease of use and visual appear- ance would probably be secondary. This would also be the case where drawing office staff, usually concerned with tool design, were the designers. Likewise, there were some heating and electronic business equipment firms who concentrated almost entirely on the detailed technical development of the product and employed no

Table 4. Employment of designers in different industry sectors. Sample: 42 UK firms employing between 25 and 2 000 people

Office Domestic furni- heating

ture % %

Electr- onic

business equip- ment

%

Does from employ Yes 76 100 100 full-time, inhouse design staff?. No 24 0 0

Does firm use external Yes 88 50 83 consultants for product design/development No 12 50 17

Vol 6 No 3 July 1985 131

on to consider new design concepts or visual and user aspects of design. Only recently, under pressure from international competition, had British firms in these sectors recognized the importance of style and ergono- mics in their products and had begun to employ inhouse or consultant industrial designers.

THE DESIGN ACTIVITY

In all the successful firms, the first specification for a new product would be drawn up by designers in collaboration with marketing, and often production, staff. The interac- tion with marketing was a primary concern in all the sectors. Indeed, where firms had no design director or manager, the person with responsibility for design would typically be the marketing director, and the chief designer would be someone who reported to him or her.

In the electronic business equipment sector, the first specification would typically be a formal document describing the market need together with the required hardware and software functions and a target price. Larger firms might also include a development, produc- tion and marketing schedule. In the heating sector, a brief would typically be a written statement of the target market and price plus basic performance requirements (e.g. heat output). In the plastics and office furniture industries, there would normally also be guidelines on materials and the product's style and 'image'. In these latter two sectors about 30% of the firms relied on an informal verbal, rather than a written, brief.

Models, mockups and prototypes were important throughout design and development in all sectors, but especially in office furniture and plastics products at the early concept stages. Electronic business equipment firms would be unlikely to produce mockups of casing design or prototype circuitry before the descriptive specification was accepted by the board, and a full-scale working prototype would normally only be produced as a final check before production. Some plastics firms produced prototypes before any descriptions or draw- ings. In such firms it was felt to be important to have something to hold, feel, look at and try out when designers were discussing ideas among themselves, but especially in discussions with marketing, production and other staff in the firm whose contributions were needed at an early stage.

Table 5. Factors in competitiveness

In all the sectors, successful firms used prototypes, not only to discuss alternative product designs within the organization, but also to get feedback from customcrs and potential customers, especially where they were major buyers or specifiers. These might be architects in the case of furniture, the gas and electricity boards in the case of heating equipment, large firms in the case ol business equipment and big stores in the case of a variety of plastic consumer products. Sevcral firms organized consumer trials with prototypes even where they were not large buyers. For example, design-conscious, c~ml- mercially successful makers of plastic toys organized groups of children to play with prototype toys, noting what they did in great detail and incorporating the children's innovations into revised toy designs. Any toy that failed to keep children amused for long periods ot time would be abandoned, regardless of the commitment of adults in the design, marketing, production, or any other department of the firm.

DESIGN FOR PROFIT

In 1983 the UK Government launched the 'Design tbr Profit' campaign as one way to improve the competitive- ness of British industry--without additional government expenditure. The DIG project addressed itself to the issue of competitiveness through design. For some years now there has been a debate about the importance of various factors in competitiveness, and in particular about the relative importance of 'price' and 'non-price' factors'2"13.

We found that a rather complex and subtle rela- tionship existed between price and non-price factors, where 'non-price' factors included product design attri- butes associated with increased quality and value, both at the point of purchase ('showroom' characteristics such as technical specification and appearance) and in actual use ('performance' characteristics such as reliability, ergono- mics and safety). This is shown in Table 5.

The design-conscious firms we visited all stressed the importance of balancing the mix of attributes for different market sectors through good design. They did not compete on the basis of low prices. Indeed, their prices were usually high relative to their competitors. Yet they also said that price w a s an important factor; they had flexible pricing policies to allow them to gain a

Non-price factors relating to the product Price factors Non-price factors relating to

the firm

• Technical specification • Appearance and finish • Performance in use • Ergonomics and safety • Reliability and durability • Style and image • Flexibility and choice etc

• Sales price • Running costs • Servicing costs • Depreciation • Trade-in value etc

• Advertising and sales promotion • Packaging and display • Aftersales service • Availability • Delivery • Reputation of firm etc

132 DESIGN STUDIES

market share when in competition and make up their profitability when in a monopoly. The key to their success was the production of well-designed products offering value for money. They were able to charge higher prices, but only if their products were of more value to the purchaser. This was especially important in export markets.

To some extent In:ms had discovered this by trial and error. Designers described product failures which (they said) had been well-designed but 'didn't do enough for the money'. For example, a heating firm had designed a solid fuel boiler that only needed refuelling once a week, but it could not be manufactured at an acceptable price. Again the 'gatekeeper' role was important. To balance price and quality it was necessary for designers to have a very clear idea of the often rapidly changing market and the requirements of production.

There are other ways in which price and 'quality' factors can interact. Design for economic manufacture and manufacturing innovation can improve product quality and reliability, reduce costs and allow price reductions. Increases in market share obtained by well designed, innovative products can also lead to economies of scale and lower prices TM.

The key to the success of the firms we visited was the production of well-designed, well marketed products which offered good value for money. Design-conscious firms viewed their resources spent on design activities by qualified, experienced design staff as an investment, like other firms might invest in" automated production technology.

However, many firms had not made much investment in either, and it was not always as a result of lack of awareness, but lack of resources, due to the small size of many firms, especially in the plastics sector, and to some extent in office furniture and electronic business equip- ment.

Government policies aimed at increasing the competi- tiveness of British industry might well be directed towards encouraging good design. But they need to consider how firms might adopt good design practices, including how they might afford to do so. They need to consider the supply of qualified designers with an aptitude for communication with marketing and produc- tion experts. In a climate of economic recession, where sheer survival is the main preoccupation of many firms, they also need to consider how such activities as good design, innovation and active marketing--all associated with expanding firms or firms secure enough to be planning expansion--may be promoted.

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

The authors wish to acknolwedge the invaluable assist-

ance of other members of the Design Innovation Group in the collection and analysis of the data on which this paper is based. In particular we wish to thank Dr Margaret Bruce and Dr John Towriss, Research Fellows on the project.

The project is supported by grants from the Joint ESRC/SERC Committee and the Open University.

R E F E R E N C E S

Allen, T J 'The Differential Performance of Information Channels in the Transfer of Technology' in Gruber, W H and Marquis D G (eds) Factors in the Transfer of Technology MIT Press, Boston (1969)

2 Allen, T J Managing the Flow of Technology MIT Press, Boston (1977)

e.g. Walsh, V M and Baker, A G 'Project Management & Communication Patterns in Industrial Research' R & D Management Vol 2 No 103 (1972)

4 e.g. Twiss, B Managing Technological Innovation Longman, London (1980)

5 Walsh, V M 'Plastics Products: Successful Firms, Innova- tion and Good Design' Design Studies Vol 4 No 1 (1983)

Roy, R and Cross, N 'Bicycles: Invention & Innovation' T263 Design: Processes & Products Units Open University Press, Milton Keynes (1983) Units 5-7

Walker, D et a/'Cars: Forms and Futures' T263 Design: Processes & Products Open University Press, Milton Keynes (1983) Units 11-13

8 Bruce, M 'The design process & the "crisis" in the UK information technology industry' Design Studies Vol 6 No 1 (January 1985) pp 34--40

9 Walsh, V M and Roy, R Plastics Products: Good Design, Innovation & Business Success, The Open University, Milton Keynes (1983)

10 Roy, R and Bruce, M Product Design, Innovation and Competition in British Manufacturing The Open University, Milton Keynes (1984)

11 Corfield, K G Product Design Report National Economic Development Office, London (1979)

12 Blackaby, F (ed.) De-Industrialisation Heinemann, London (1979)

13 Pavitt, K (ed.) Technical Innovation and British Economic Performance Macmillan, London (1980)

14 Phillips, L W e t al 'Product quality, Cost Position and Business Performance' Journal of Marketing Vol 47 (Spring 1983) pp 26-43

Vol 6 No 3 July 1985 133