KPIs for Designs

[narrowcurves]

Hi all

New to the forum here. I've done some searches but nothing seems to come up. I am very interested in how Design Engineers & their outputs are measured. What makes a good design or a good designer? I'm keen to understand where, if at all, the cost of the design comes into play. And how manufacturability is reviewed/measured.

[AlexLachance]

It all depends on what you're designing mate. These can all be criterias to watch for but there can be many other more, depending on what you are designing. For instance, I design trailers, so there's some balancing going on there when we make specific trailers for specific clients who have specific needs.

[CarrieIves]

I'd say that every project I work on has some kind of balance of what is most important. I would be careful about putting measurements on design outputs. I think it would be hard to measure things that actually mattered. Maybe you could measure the number of changes required to the design after it is released? But, did you get a chance to see the prototype before it was released? Is it something brand new or just an improvement on something already existing? I consider all 4 of the things you mention. Be careful of using something easy to measure as your standard. Hours spent, lines of code, or BOM cost are easy to measure, but they may not be telling you what you need.
A great design seems obvious when it is done. But, getting there usually takes iteration and careful consideration of the requirements (many of which aren't written down).

[Damo]

This is a very tricky question. And I'm not even certain it's been asked correctly. It really is dependent on what you are designing and the end result requirements of your product. (I design transport equipment and so several of these factors are to be considered. Some more important than others.) But others out there are designing medical equipment, aerospace tech, or military hardware. These designers would have a greater emphasis on function rather than cost, and durability and safety over product lifetime is likely more important than initial lead-times. To the point where in some cases entire new manufacturing methods or materials will need to be designed and engineered to support these designs. Others may be designing gadgets and trinkets for Amazon/Temu etc. and therefore unquestionably cost would be the greater priority. Likely in sacrifice of quality I'd suppose too. It is all relative.
A good designer strives to create an output that is superior, relative to their ecosystem they operate within. If the end result is a comparitively durable quality product that can be manufactured efficiently for less cost, good. If it is of higher quality for same cost, also good. etc. Oftentimes it is worth the extra design time to achieve this.
Tell us what you're designing specifically and this community may be able to offer some varied metrics to evaluate based upon this collective's eclectic experiences.

[narrowcurves]

It all depends on what you're designing mate. These can all be criterias to watch for but there can be many other more, depending on what you are designing. For instance, I design trailers, so there's some balancing going on there when we make specific trailers for specific clients who have specific needs.

Thanks for the response, I was trying to get a range of responses to see what came up the most and see if there was an overall most important KPI. Well aware it will be different for different products/industries, so perhaps I should have phrased it differently.