In the sphere of product development and manufacturing, design validation is often overlooked despite being one of the crucial aspects. Design validation plans (DVP) have a crucial role in ensuring that the product flawlessly adheres to all the specifications and functions.
So, if you’re a product development professional, what must you do to ensure that your end product meets the desired specifications? The answer is in implementing the design validation. This comprehensive guide focuses on the complexities of building a Design Validation Plan that offers a procedural actionable roadmap to ensure project success.
What is A Design Validation Plan?
A Design Validation Plan is a set of procedural steps created to analytically and meticulously evaluate a product design and confirm that it conforms to intended specifications and performance criteria. The plan plays a vital role in all areas where product development takes place, such as manufacturing, technology, and engineering. It’s particularly crucial in industries where the reliability and accuracy of the product are supreme.
This process helps product development teams spot design flaws and rectify them, reducing risks such as product failure, therefore saving resources and time. Depending on the industry in question, there are various DVP design validation plans used, including market studies, calculations, and product testing.
It’s worth noting that a product design may meet the verification requirements but fail to satisfy validation. This can happen especially if there were flaws in the product requirements or specifications. When such a scenario emerges, the product shall have met the requirements of the designer but fail to achieve what the end user or customer wants. Unfortunately, this is often the case.
The Guide to Creating a Successful Design Validation Plan
A properly crafted DVP has clearly described phases that show what needs to be done. These stages are not merely a checklist of tasks but rather a strategic process that implants confidence in the design and product created.
It’s crucial to have a structured design validation plan template that is customised to a specific product or project. Although DVPs vary in complexity and content according to the project requirements and industry, a template has sections and guidelines for capturing essential information.
Let’s look at the design validation plan steps in detail:
1. Define Clear Objectives
Every successful design validation plan starts with clearly defining the objectives to be achieved. What are the crucial design features that you need to be validated? What are the performance benchmarks? Also, determine the scope of your validation process.
Your design validation objective should outline the various aspects of your product design that you need to validate, such as safety, functionality, compliance with standards, and performance.
2. Assemble a Team of Skilled Personnel
It’s impossible to successfully execute a plan without the right team. Even if your design validation plan template is great, if you don’t have the right people to implement it, it won’t work. Create a skilled team of experts from various relevant niches.
Also, ensure there is maximum and efficient teamwork among the designers, engineers, quality control team, and testing team. This will ensure that your validation process is comprehensive and touches on every aspect of the product.
3. Identify The Design Validation Methods to Use
With the objectives clearly defined, and a skilled team assembled, the next phase is identifying which validation methods you will use. There are various methods to choose from, such as analytical modelling, simulations, and physical testing. You can opt for one or a combination of these methods. When choosing a method, ensure that it aligns with the goals and constraints of your project.
4. Create a Validation Schedule
Every project must work with a schedule to ensure its implementation does not affect other aspects of product development. Create a detailed design validation schedule with an outline of when each activity will happen, the person or team responsible, and the resources needed.
The schedule should be realistic, factoring all potential delays and other unforeseen challenges. The best way to go about this is to discuss the plan with the stakeholders and to ensure each team’s necessities are put into consideration.
5. Design Validation Plan Documentation
The product development process should be flexible enough to allow room for future upgrades or changes. The best way to ensure this is possible is by documenting your validation plan. Documentation is crucial for traceability and meeting product compliance.
The documentation should highlight the objectives to be met, team members and their roles, validation methods used, and schedules among other crucial details. The document is a roadmap and reference point during the validation process.
6. Execute the Validation Plan
Once the design validation plan is ready, it’s time to implement it. Stick to the schedule during execution and carry out the validation activities as per the defined methods. Ensure all your test results, observations, and deviations are documented.
7. Analyse and Interpret Data
During data analysis, you will uncover real insights about the product by meticulously reviewing the collected data. Also, compare the data to defined benchmarks and objectives. While analysing the data, watch out for discrepancies and other areas that need further investigation.
From the inferences drawn out of data analysis, decide what to do about the product design. If you spot deviations or issues, decide whether they’re tolerable or need design modifications. This whole process may require revisiting the design validation process repeatedly.
8. Document The Outcome
It’s crucial to carry out comprehensive documentation as it will be useful in compliance, auditing and referencing in the future. Every validation result, decision, and modification performed should be documented. The documentation forms a part of the history of the project and is useful for continuous improvement.
9. Implement Corrective Actions
If you identified any design defects while doing validation, carry out the necessary corrective procedures. These may involve revising the design, improving processes, or performing additional testing.
10. Continuous Improvement
The last design validation plan step is to instil a culture of continuous improvement. Make use of the insights gathered during the validation process to create better future design validation plans. Encourage the team to provide feedback while learning from one another at all times.
What is a Design Validation Plan and Report (DVP&R)?
A design validation plan and report (DVP&R) is a document consisting of the tests carried out to assess the efficacy of a design to meet its requirements and specifications. In most cases, the DVP&R finds its use at the evaluation stage, however, it ought to be created after defining the design requirements. Engineers should also ensure that a DVP&R exists before embarking on the engineering of the design.
It’s worth noting that a design validation plan format varies according to an organisation’s preferences, project requirements and industry standards. But generally, a DVP format should have the essential sections and information to provide clarity and be effective.
Check out the design validation plan and report example from this link to understand what the DVP&R may look like.
Design Validation Methods
What are the various methods used for validating designs? There are different approaches and techniques for assessing and confirming that a design matches the product specifications and requirements. The methods play a vital role in ensuring the product meets quality and performance thresholds and is reliable.
The following are the various methods of design validation commonly used in different industries:
Usability testing
Any design that does not put the end user in mind is not effective. Every impactful design decision needs to be validated by testing it on real users. It’s only after this that the design is regarded as validated. In usability testing, the product or part of it is subjected to real-world scenarios and conditions to observe how it behaves.
This method is mostly useful when testing the user-friendliness or ergonomic design of a consumer product.
Hallway testing
Every designer has an innate mindset that often pushes them to judge designs built by others. The Hallway testing makes use of this trait. It simply involves asking a designer colleague, partner, or friend to analyse your design. You’ll be surprised at how effective this method is, especially in generating new ideas.
It’s important to get feedback from a designer or a user who understands your product so they can provide valuable and actionable information.
Analytics and benchmarking
Product design is what drives business. As such, an effective product design needs to have essential product metrics defined. You can then measure these metrics about the product design to determine if your design is good. The downside to this approach though is that it takes time to collect the data.
Furthermore, your design should incorporate fewer changes to allow estimating each design decision separately. Otherwise, it will be difficult to establish what’s working and what’s not.
You can counter the challenges of analytical testing through benchmarking. Benchmarks are simply a product’s industry standards for the various metrics of a product. If the targeted metrics match the industry standards, then you can conclude that your product design is good.
Stakeholder interviews
Most product development teams rarely consider stakeholder interviews as a method of design validation. But the truth is, that stakeholders (anyone with an impact on product design) are key players in the design of a product. Therefore, interviewing them can provide essential feedback about the design.
Since stakeholders are key decision makers in the product design process, you can eliminate the back and forth in redoing designs by involving them from the start.
Summary
A design validation plan is a structured framework used to guide the process of validating a product’s design to ensure it meets the intended specifications and requirements. It’s the roadmap for systematic testing and confirming that the design is reliable. Therefore, leading to the development of high-quality products.
It’s crucial to note that the specific details and steps of the design validation can vary depending on the product complexity, industry, and regulatory requirements. As such, the DVP design validation plan should be customised to meet the project’s specific requirements to ensure the validation is effective. This also plays a vital role in meeting compliance standards and regulations of the product.
