November 25, 2020: Product Life Cycle (PLC)

Speaker: Abdul Khalfan CQE, SSGB

Principal, Quality Assurance & Reliability Engineering Consulting Services

Product Life Cycle (PLC) refers to sequential phases from product planning to end of life. Generally, it comprises of six main stages, they are: i) Product Planning, ii) Design and Development, iii) Verification and Validation, iv) Production, v) Product Release/Field Follow/Sustaining Engineering and vi) End of Life of the Product.

i) Product Planning Phase – Product Planning is to identify customer needs, analyze business trends, and market competition, and develop product proposals. The document which describes and details this phase is known as Marketing Requirement Document (MRD).

ii) Design and Development Phase – This phase usually begins with preparation of detailed product requirements. These detailed requirements are documented and defined in a Product Requirement Document (PRD). Based upon the PRD, Technical Specifications are developed to conform to the Product Requirements as defined in the PRD and that truncates upwards to the MRD.

iii) Verification and Validation Phase – This phase consists of two major steps: Design Verification (DV) and Design Validation, also known as (DV). Once the design is completed, there is a design verification process which is paper based, i.e., Engineers and Technical Teams from cross-functional departments provide their input. If there is a consensus that the Design meets the Product Requirements as defined, a small no. of units are built for DV testing. These units are known as Prototypes.

Based upon the successful results of the Prototype units the Design Validation process commences. In this phase a statistical sample size of units are selected and extensively tested in accordance with the product requirements to ensure that the product will comply with the Reliability, Availability, Serviceability, Useability, and Installability better known as RASUI concepts. The intent is to provide a minimum of 80% statistical confidence level that the product is built right, i.e., as per its defined requirements.

iv) Production Phase – In this phase the Manufacturing process must be validated for Production readiness or Mass Production (MP).

v) Product Release Phase – Once the product has been validated for its design and manufacturing processes, and the product is officially released for the market place for sales and service sustaining Engineering or Current Engineering Team takes over from the parent Design Team and provides Technical and Maintenance support to the external customer installations. It is also known as Field Follow phase.

vi) End of Life (EOL) Phase – This is the terminal phase of a Product Life Cycle. The product is discarded, scrapped, or recycled when it is unable to continue or is not cost effective.

About Abdul Khalfan:

Abdul Khalfan is a Quality Management Systems Professional (QMS) with extensive experience in the high-tech industry. His hands-on style and practical approach to business management makes him a natural catalyst for improvement initiatives. His unique career path and ground up experience has provided him with business and process insights leading to greater profitability, value-add, and efficacy for small, medium, and large companies and organizations such as NCR Corporation, Flextronics, Ingenico, Com Dev, Teledyne-Dalsa, ITT, Bell-Howell, KA Imaging, Curriato Inc., Schock Metal America Inc., Durose Steel, Honda Automotive, Kaparel, to name a few. Currently, he is providing Consulting Services for ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 13485:2016 Standards to Medical Device and non-medical companies in Kitchener-Waterloo area.

Abdul Khalfan consistently focused upon underperforming processes and products to higher levels of excellence and profitability. Using careful statistical analysis and a keen eye for value-add and process improvements he has been able to transform unproductive, wasteful practices into effective and value added process improvements.

[Read more about Mr. Khalfan]

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