BUSINESS PROCESS RE - ENGINEERING

Product Development Case of KODAK

Kodak
Eastman Kodak Company is a multinational US

corporation which produces imaging and photographic materials and equipment. Long known film products.

for

its

wide

range

of

photographic

Kodak is re-focusing on two major markets: digital photography and digital printing

Re-engineering: Product development case

Kodak and Fuji Film were the leaders of the photography industry in the world.

In 1987, arch rival Fuji introduced a 35mm single use camera

 Kodak had no competitive offering. It would take almost 70 weeks for Kodak to produce

a rival to Fujis Camera which would give them a

good head start. This was because of Kodaks traditional product design process. To slash its time-to-time marker, Kodak

reengineered its product development process

Kodaks Product Development Process

Kodak had a sequential development process. Camera body design Shutter designing Film advance mechanism designing Final process Also, there was a lack of communication between the designing departments
SLOW

Re-Engineering # 1
Use of CAD/CAM (Computer aided design/ manufactuing) This technology helped engineers to design at workstations instead of drafting tables. This made designers more productive but still had a marginal effect on the whole process

Re-engineering # 2
The technology that enabled Kodak to reengineer its process is an integrated product design database. Each day this database collects each designers work and combines thwm into one. Any correction or redesign would be done the next day morning. Advantages:
Problems were resolved immmediately instead of weeks/ months. Manufacturing engineers began tooling design weeks into development process as soon as designers have given the prototype some shape.

Result
The concurrent engineering of Kodak helped them to

produce the single-use-camera in 38 weeks from the earlier 70 weeks. It helped tooling designers to get involved before the product design was finished.
Kodak reduced its tooling manufacturing costs for the single-use-camera by 25 percent