Question

BIS 647 Design Thinking Case Study

Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a methodology used by designers to solve complex problems and find desirable solutions for clients. A design mindset is not problem-focused, it’s solution focused and action-oriented towards creating a preferred future.

In this course, we have learned standard business processes in different functional modules. In the real world, the business transactions are integrated. It requires the business designers to not only understand the business problems and processes but also use design thinking method to achieve desired solutions.

The purpose of the current case study is to utilize design thinking approach to solve a given business problem. Please read the background and other provided information. Based on the given information, please apply what you have learned in the class to answer the questions by the end.

Background

Suppose that you are a new hiring, and you are taking the rotations across different departments within Trike-R-Us Inc. One of the most popular products is the premium tricycle for kids. Trike-R-Us Inc. purchases raw materials, such as frame, wheels, and tires from vendor Tricycle Parts. Then they assemble and produce the premium tricycles and sell them to both wholesale and retail customers.

Till now you have already finished the rotation and understood the general business processes within the enterprise. Your supervisor asks you to prepare a plan for sales of the premium tricycle in December 2017. You have already collected the products sales history, BOM, and other relevant information. Based on the information, please answer the key questions at the end.

Premium Tricycle Sales History

Month	Quantity Sold
Jan-2017	980
Feb-2017	1200
Mar-2017	1000
Apr-2017	950
May-2017	980
Jun-2017	1010
Jul-2017	1000
Aug-2017	970
Sep-2017	990
Oct-2017	1005
Nov-2017	995
Dec-2017	?

Premium Tricycle BOM

Material Name	Quantity
Frame	1
Rear Wheel	2
Rear Tire	2
Front Wheel	1
Front Tire	1
Handle Bar	1
Stem	1
Hand Grips	2
Seat	1

Material information

Material Name	Purchasing Price	Stock
Frame	$ 10.00	500
Rear Wheel	$ 3.00	500
Rear Tire	$ 2.50	500
Front Wheel	$ 3.00	500
Front Tire	$ 2.50	500
Handle Bar	$ 4.00	500
Stem	$ 7.00	500
Hand Grips	$ 2.00	500
Seat	$ 5.00	500
Premium Tricycle		0

Key questions:

1. Based on your thinking, what is the possible amount of sales of Premium Tricycles in December 2017? If you have implemented SAP as ERP solution in your company, which step in production planning will determine this number ?

2. With SAP, if you run MRP to process the planning, what are the input and outputs? Please detail the input and output with material name and quantity (hint: Planned independent requirement, purchase requisition, and production proposal)

3. In order to prepare for the December 2017 sales, what do you need to prepare before December 2017? (hint: purchase order/production order)

4. Do you have a shortage of the raw materials? What is the specific shortage for each of them?

5. If you need to purchase the raw material from Tricycle Parts, what is the purchase order value? Please provide the detailed formula of how you calculate the order value

6. If the inventory management department has set up a safety stock for each of the raw materials as follows, how this configuration will impact MRP? Please detail the updated output. What is the updated shortage for each of the raw materials? What is the updated purchase order value?

Material Name	Purchasing Price	Stock	Safety Stock
Frame	$ 10.00	500	150
Rear Wheel	$ 3.00	500	150
Rear Tire	$ 2.50	500	150
Front Wheel	$ 3.00	500	150
Front Tire	$ 2.50	500	150
Handle Bar	$ 4.00	500	150
Stem	$ 7.00	500	150
Hand Grips	$ 2.00	500	150
Seat	$ 5.00	500	150

Answer 1

When design principles are applied to strategy and innovation the success rate for innovation dramatically improves. Design-led companies such as Apple, Coca-Cola, IBM, Nike, Procter & Gamble and Whirlpool have outperformed the S&P 500 over the past 10 years by an extraordinary 219%, according to a 2014 assessment by the Design Management Institute.

Great design has that “wow” factor that makes products more desirable and services more appealing to users.

Due to the remarkable success rate of design-led companies, design has evolved beyond making objects. Organizations now want to learn how to think like designers, and apply design principles to the workplace itself. Design thinking is at the core of effective strategy development and organizational change.

“Design-thinking firms stand apart in their willingness to engage in the task of continuously redesigning their business…to create advances in both innovation and efficiency—the combination that produces the most powerful competitive edge.”
—Roger Martin, author of the Design of Business

“Engineering, medicine, business, architecture, and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent—not how things are but how they might be—in short, with design…Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”
—Herbert Alexander Simon, Nobel Prize laureate (1969)

You can design the way you lead, manage, create and innovate. The design way of thinking cor understanding and pursuing innovation in ways that contribute to organic growth and add real value to your customers.The design thinking cycle involves observation to discover unmet needs within the context and constraints of a particular situation, framing the opportunity and scope of innovation, generating creative ideas, testing and refining solutions.

Creativity is central to the design process. CLICK TO TWEET

This diagram illustrates the design thinking framework created by The Design Council (UK), which maps the design process into four distinct phases: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver. This illustrates the divergent and convergent stages of the design process.

Design thinking informs human-centered innovation

Human-centered innovation begins with developing an understanding of customers’ or users’ unmet or unarticulated needs.“The most secure source of new ideas that have true competitive advantage, and hence, higher margins, is customers’ unarticulated needs,” says Jeanne Liedtka (Batten Briefings 2015), “Customer intimacy—a deep knowledge of customers and their problems—helps to uncover those needs.”

Design thinking minimizes the uncertainty and risk of innovation by engaging customers or users through a series of prototypes to learn, test and refine concepts. Design thinkers rely on customer insights gained from real-world experiments, not just historical data or market research.

See also: How Design Thinking Adds Value to Innovation

Develop design thinking capabilities in your organization

You don’t have to be a designer to think like one. While learning to be a good designer takes years, you can think like a designer and design the way you lead, manage, create and innovate. Design begins with setting a strategic intention. If you are mapping out a strategy, you are designing.