Optimization of Cultural and Creative Product Development Process Based on Digital Intelligent Manufacturing Technology

In the CNKI full-text periodical database platform, a total of 161 articles of various types of literature were retrieved by searching with the theme of “cultural and creative products”, and 95 articles were retrieved by searching with the theme of “cultural and creative products”. Analyzing the time scale, journal articles with the theme of “cultural and creative products” appeared for the first time in 2015, while the literature on cultural and creative products first appeared in 2007. From 2016 onwards, the number of articles on cultural and creative products has increased rapidly, and the number of articles on cultural and creative products has also increased year by year. When searching on Wikipedia journals with the keyword “cultural and creative products”, relevant journal articles first appeared around 2011. Is dominated by expository articles introducing Taiwan’s cultural and creative products, while the research on cultural and creative products for the Mainland began in 2013. After that, the number of papers on cultural and creative products has shown a blowout trend, doubling every year on average until 2019. This shows that China’s research on cultural and creative products started late but developed fast, and that the favorable policies and the success of the cultural and creative products of the National Palace Museum have inspired the enthusiasm of research on cultural and creative products in various academic fields during this period.

Although everyone has different starting points for the definition of cultural and creative products, in various definitions, the three key words of cultural and creative products are expressed “cultural characteristics”, “creative characteristics” and “product characteristics”, and these three points are taken as the three basic conditions for measuring whether a product is a cultural and creative product. It is preferred to define cultural and creative products as a collection of tangible products and intangible services that can satisfy consumers’ needs with culture and creativity at the core. The research on cultural and creative products by deconstructing a certain cultural element from the perspective of design is very rich and provides many operational methods that can be learned from.

The management and study of process reengineering includes the study and development of process reengineering methodologies. These methodologies include, but are not limited to, Business Process Reengineering, Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, and others. Researchers and managers work to develop new process reengineering methodologies to improve efficiency, reduce costs, increase customer value, etc.

Process reengineering is divided into seven main steps, which are detailed to include clarifying company strategy, selecting good cases, launching process examination, building updated processes, deploying improved processes, evaluating the effectiveness of process deployment, and continuously optimizing processes. In this paper, we will integrate the core steps of the above scholars from the business process efficiency, quality, cost, customer satisfaction and other dimensions of business process reengineering and evaluation of P enterprises. The 7-step model of process reengineering is shown in Figure 1: process reengineering in the Internet era has a new principle, which is mainly summarized in the following four aspects: user, product, speed, platform. The user is the key to business process reengineering in the Internet era, to selectively and proactively satisfy some critical customer needs. Products in the Internet era put more emphasis on the ultimate, emphasizing product promotion, advocating that good products will speak, rather than the past “fragrant wine is not afraid of the deep alley” concept. Speed is extremely in line with the characteristics of the Internet era, so enterprises should pay attention to the speed of business process reengineering; in the Internet era, the enterprise is the investor and the staff to build a platform, the enterprise should be regarded as a platform to display their own value.

Figure 1.

Process reconstruction 7 step model

Parallel engineering theory, which was first created in 1987 by the U.S. Department of Defense Research Center after investigating the feasibility of parallel engineering, is based on the concept of a systematic approach to designing products and their associated processes in parallel and in an integrated manner.

The method mainly requires product development designers to fully consider all possible factors involved in the full product cycle, including quality, time, cost, functional requirements, etc., at the start-up stage. Its purpose is to fully improve the quality of the product, save process overhead, and speed up the time of product design and production. From the emergence of the theory, after more than a decade of development, there has been a greater optimization and enhancement, but also has been a large number of enterprises have achieved significant practical results, to obtain a greater social and economic benefits, which can make the product quality, cost, and schedule to achieve the best.

Parallel engineering in product development concept and management have formed a greater difference with the traditional serial product development method has formed a clear difference, the main features are: (1) product development in the early design stage largely determines the cost of the final product consumed and the performance of the quality. If there are already problems in the design phase, then the subsequent stages tend to magnify the problems more and more. Consider the full life cycle of the product while focusing on the early stages of the product development process. (2) We strive to fully consider all factors involved in the entire process from design to use at the start of product development, and to integrate them at the design stage in order to minimize subsequent changes and improve overall efficiency. (3) The principle of “parallelism” is fully embodied in the product development process, which means that information is sufficiently synchronized. (4) Product development and design as well as its process design to reflect the integration of design work to achieve synergy. (5) User functions should be fully satisfied, the beginning of the design to take into account all the potential needs of the user to ensure that the final realization of the product effect. (6) Product development and design should maintain continuous iteration for self-improvement.

Definition 1: Path Length: During the execution of a workflow scheduling task, the sum of the time for all tasks on a path to be completed (not the number of arcs on the path) is called the path length.

Definition 2: Critical Path: In the process of workflow task execution, the path with the longest path length is called the critical path.

Definition 3: Workflow Length: The length of the critical path in a workflow task is called the workflow length.

Definition 4: Duration Start Time: During the execution of a workflow task, each node’s task has a duration start time, if the earliest start time is defined as tes and the latest start time is defined as tls, then the difference of tes − tls is called the duration start time. It is also called time flexibility in some literature.

Definition 5: Critical Tasks: when the node task has a duration start time tes − tls and the difference between the two is 0, i.e., tes = tls, the task with no time redundancy is called a critical task.

Analyzing to find the critical path starts with discerning which are tes = tls critical tasks without time redundancy to find the critical path.

It can be seen that in this workflow scheduling, the task that has a difference of 0 in the duration start time tes − tls of each task is the critical task, from which the critical path can be found. The time on the critical path determines the completion time of the entire workflow task, while the time on the non-critical path has no effect on the completion time of the entire task. The sum of the costs spent by all subtasks to sub-tasks in the entire workflow task is the total cost of completing the entire workflow task. Since the time on the critical path determines the total time of the entire workflow task, controlling the deadline to the time spent on the critical path allows the time interval on the non-critical path to be enlarged, and the difference between the actual time spent on the non-critical path and that spent on the critical path becomes the floatable time interval. The time to perform a task on a non-critical path is floated upwards in a floating time interval that is satisfied by a deadline constraint, allowing its cost to be optimized. The specific algorithm is implemented as follows:

Finding the key task is to find the task with duration start time es(i)=ls(i)$$es\left( i \right) = ls\left( i \right)$$. In order to find ls(i)$$ls\left( i \right)$$, es(i)$$es\left( i \right)$$, it is necessary to find the earliest start time of each sub-task of the workflow tes(m)$$tes\left( m \right)$$, tls(m)$$tls\left( m \right)$$. If task Vi is represented by the arc 〈m,n〉$$\left\langle {m,n} \right\rangle$$, then the duration start time is noted as cont(〈m,n〉)$$cont\left( {\left\langle {m,n} \right\rangle } \right)$$, then: (1)es(i)=tes(m)$$es\left( i \right) = {t_{es}}\left( m \right)$$ (2)ls(i)=tls(n)−cont(〈m,n〉)$$ls\left( i \right) = {t_{ls}}\left( n \right) - cont\left( {\left\langle {m,n} \right\rangle } \right)$$

Solving tes(m)$$tes\left( m \right)$$ and tls(m)$$tls\left( m \right)$$ requires two steps, starting with tes(0) = 0 and moving forward to tes(m), Tes(m) = Max{tes(i) + cont(〈m, n〉)}. 〈m, n〉 belongs to T, k = 1, 2……k − 1, where T is the set of all arcs that begin with m vertices. Working backwards from t1s(k − 1) = tes(k − 1), we find tls(m), Tls(i) = Min{tls(m) − cont(〈m, n〉)}. 〈m, n〉 belongs to S, i = k − 2……0, where S is the set of all arcs ending in k vertices.

For the above algorithm after finding out the critical path, we will count the time difference interval between the latest completion time and the earliest start time of the task, so that we can use the time difference as a deadline constraint to find the appropriate cloud service resources for scheduling to achieve the purpose of cost optimization.

Based on the optimized integrated product development milestones, the implementation will go through four phases: feasibility analysis and quotation phase, product design and validation phase, process engineering validation phase and mass production phase. During this process, four reviews are required: Product Definition Review, Product Validation Review, Business Acceptance Review and Product Development Closeout Review. These phases and reviews ensure the smooth progress of the new product in the development process and ensure the quality and performance of the final product. Based on the optimized product development process, the work breakdown structure (WBS) of the product development plan of Wenxin is refined, and the Gantt chart is used to achieve the effective management of the product development plan and progress of Wenxin.

Gantt chart, also known as crosswalk or bar chart, is a visualization tool widely used in project management. It provides a clear and intuitive visualization of progress and the intrinsic linkage of time-related system progress with the help of horizontal bar charts. Since its introduction in the early 20th century, the Gantt chart has been widely used in a variety of fields. In new product development management, using Gantt charts has its unique advantages, including intuition, flexibility, visual management and simplicity.

For the development plan of cultural and creative products, based on the reorganized new product development process, the optimized reimbursement process, mold development process and reliability test process are introduced. At the same time, based on the optimized product development process, a corresponding output document list is formulated and based on this list, the development and validation plan of the cultural and creative products is executed, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Venter product development plan

The Gantt chart of the cultural and creative product development plan shows that the milestone cycle of the whole product development process is 91 days, which is designed to ensure that the product development, testing and market launch are completed within the scheduled time. Through thorough organization, combined with close collaboration among the new product development team members, this ensures that new product development is able to progress smoothly and on schedule. At the same time, the progress of new product development is monitored in real time and the plan is flexibly adjusted according to the actual situation to ensure the successful execution of the new product development process.

In order to ensure the authenticity of the process validation during the implementation of the optimization plan, no additional manpower and resources were invested in the new product development and validation process other than the normal new product development team members. After about 5 months of effort by the new product development team members, all milestone phases were successfully completed according to the scheduled plan, and the first batch of products was sent to the designated delivery location according to the customer’s requirements, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Venter product development plan and actual comparison

Although the implementation process overall went well and was successfully completed, there were some challenges encountered during the execution process, which resulted in a delay of 8 days in the new product development cycle compared to the original plan. The main reason for the delay came from the mold validation phase. During this phase, the mold developed an abnormal ejector structure after the second modification, resulting in the factory receiving a lower cover with visible ejector marks, which prevented the enclosure from meeting the desired appearance standards. In order to solve this problem, the new product development team contacted the mold factory in time and adjusted the ejector structure accordingly. However, this process took an additional three days.

In addition, during reliability testing in the lab, it was discovered that the product’s test data was out of the specified range. After re-testing and comparative analysis with the factory test data, it was revealed that there were inconsistencies in the test specifications between the R&D center and the factory. To resolve the issue, the new product development engineer adjusted the lab’s test specifications accordingly so that the reliability test could continue. However, this process resulted in two days of additional time.

In addition, during the milestone review, both the product validation review and the commercial acceptance review were completed one day earlier than originally planned, resulting in an overall time savings of two days. This was due to the optimization of the document list during the new product development process, which reduced the number of document lists, thus reducing the load of review preparation work.

Overall, although there were some problems during the implementation of the optimization plan, the new product development process went smoothly, and the new product development and delivery of the first batch of products were completed within the 13.86 weeks required by the customer.

After the optimization of the new product development process, Company G’s cultural and creative product development work is more adaptable to the fast-changing market competition environment, and there are significant improvements and enhancements to the significant problems it currently faces. It not only enhances Company G’s market competitiveness, but also lays a solid foundation for its future sustainable development.