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Innovate Make and Have Ours Co. Ltd. Engineering Design Companies, A Catalyst for National Development. A paper from the IMHO team

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IMHO TEAM
2023-12-11 . 14 min read

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Abstract

Industrialization is key to national development, a country’s ability to solve its problems, convert natural resources into useful products, and generate income from international trade is dependent on this. The industry is not a standalone sector it is a segment of a complete process that ensures that problems are solved and made available to consumers. The Product process shows strong industries cannot be built without a strong Design industry, and a service sector (go-to-market sector) that is overly dependent on imports without a local industry supporting will just put pressure on the economy....

To be able to produce homemade goods that are competitive locally and internationally, it is prudent that the industrial sector and government empower the establishment of engineering design companies and provide them with the appropriate conditions to enable smooth operations. These companies take everyday problems through the design process to create products, systems, and software solutions to solve those problems. The design process is the systematic approach that involves a series of stages that are followed to provide solutions from the identification of a need to satisfy a customer's want.

It has been shown over and over again that massive investment in Research and Development (R&D) by developed countries (North America, Europe, Asia) has been key to their innovativeness, building systems that work, and solving problems. Design (industrial and engineering) is a catalyst for national development, the right investment by industry and excellent government policies in these companies can lead to a new revolution, that will spark the beginning of massive industrialization.

Introduction

Modern society rides on the flow of goods and services. Our ability to solve problems by introducing them in the form of products and services drives the economies of modern societies. For a country to have a strong and resilient economy, it needs to build a level of control over its trades both internally and externally. The management of scarce resources and their distribution among the populace calls for excellent strategies that seek to optimize all the processes of generating value out of these resources and satisfying the needs and demands of people. The industrialization process has been outlined as the key to achieving such economic resilience. This idea can be traced to the early days of the formation of the newly independent states of Africa, making references to the Economic Commission for Africa, which has emphasized the need for economic planning at a continental scale. In this plan, a focus is placed on the development of new industries and making excellent use of the abundant natural resources (Nkrumah, 1965). In the modern era, initiatives by the current government of Ghana to industrialize the country through its one district one factory program show the continuation of the effort to industrialize the country (One District One Factory – 1D1F, no date). This paper would like to draw attention to the fact that Research and Development are very important to achieving the goal of building an industrialized inclusive and resilient economy. And engineering design firms and think tanks are the essential pieces of the puzzle needed for achieving these collective goals for national development.

Engineering design companies or commonly known as design companies are companies that offer engineering design services. They solve problems using the design process, which is a systematic approach that is being used for solving engineering and design problems(Giesecke et al., 2016). In Ghana, there are only a few companies that offer pure design services at their firms. Some companies specialize in specific fields like mining, petroleum, and other areas where they usually serve as consultancy partners. A simple google search on design engineering companies in Ghana will not yield any specific company, apart from the ones involved in specific fields as mentioned earlier such as Technip company. A general search on design engineering companies will bring up firms like EPAM, Stantec, Tata Elxsi, among others worldwide (Engineering Design Companies, 2022).

The Product Process

The Product process is defined as the series of stages that products go through before ending up with the users. This stage includes the value chains, supports, and other services attached to products to ensure good user satisfaction. The Product process is very fundamental to any economic system, the demand for goods and services is met largely through this process. Figure 1.0 shows the processes and how various stages are linked to ensure the continuous delivery of products and related services to consumers. The process presents the stages from the identification of the problem or needs to the point where the solution is presented to the consumer in the form of a product to satisfy that need.

The stages of the Product process:

Retailer:This is the stage of the process that consumers are usually accustomed to. They buy their products at stores and other retail ventures. As part of national policies, it is the task of the government to ensure that inflation is kept low, so the prices of these products do not spike and remain affordable

Wholesale: Wholesalers supply the retail stores with the products. They often take care of bulk purchases of the products too.

Factory Distributors: In some cases, for the product to get to the various marketplaces, there is a need for factory distributors. This includes importers of the products or those who fully own the right for their distribution directly from the manufacturers.

Factory: This is where the products are made usually through the combination of raw materials, human resources, and types of machinery.

Labor: This covers the human resources needed for producing the products. This includes managers (engineers, human resources), technicians, and many others within the product value chain.

Raw Materials: Raw materials for making products can be in the form of natural materials, and other semi-finished products.

It should be noted that products can be in the form of software solutions. Software solutions before reaching the end-users go through a similar process, various application stores serve as retailers and other companies own the right to the software distribution. The factory is synonymous with the developers and the various packages and libraries they use.

Factory Layout: Factory Layout refers to the way a factory floor is designed for the installation of various types of machinery and systems, which usually depend on the manufacturing process. The purpose of a good factory layout design is to reduce complexity, carrying cost, risk of hazards, and improve delay time.

Some types of factory floor designs are Process layout, product layout, fixed position layout, and cellular layout. The backbone of a good factory layout is the design team that designs the factory.

Production planning: Production planning is the next important step in making an idea of a product into a reality. At this stage, the engineering team figures out the best way to manufacture and produce the products. A meticulous plan is drawn to find the safest, most effective, efficient, and high-quality approach to producing it.

In the production planning process; engineers usually think of:

  1. 1. The number of products to be produced
  2. 2. The production facility (Layout)
  3. 3. Manufacturing support system.
  4. 4. Automation in the production system
  5. 5. Manual Labor

Product Design: This is a process that is being deployed to develop a product that solves a problem or serves a specific function(s). The principles of engineering science and creative processes are applied in generating ideas of how components and parts should be made to play a role in the holistic functionality of a product.

At the end of the product design, a visual presentation of the product is made, specifications are made known for its geometry, and materials selected. The success of this process is highly dependent on the quality and how thorough the design team is.

Design Process: The design process is the procedure followed to solve design problems. It involves both creative and scientific analysis.

Problem: The problem initiates the need for a solution: These problems come in the form of societal problems, making updates on existing products or systems, or a sudden disaster

Consumers are usually abstracted from almost all the stages in the process.

Go-to-Market Stage

The go-to-market stage of the Product Process makes up all the value-chain that ensures getting the product to market successfully while establishing services around the product if necessary to ensure that the product is performing to consumer satisfaction. Company’s come up with go-tomarket strategies; this is the interface at which the company sells to and serves its customer base and interacts with new prospects (Go-Market-Strategy Whitepaper, 2012).

In an import-dependent country like Ghana, the go-to-market stage of the Product process is the largest. The majority of contributions to the country’s GDP are from this sector. From the research of the Integrated Business Establishment Survey (IBES), the total amount of revenue generated by the three sectors is GH¢457 billion. Much of the revenue (GH¢317.7 billion representing 70.4 percent) was generated by the Services sector(Krakah, Agyaho, and Adzovor, 2015). The services sector of the Ghanaian economy out of the total of 3,102,917 persons were engaged by establishments of which 74.6 percent (2,314,309 persons) were engaged by the Services sector(Krakah, Agyaho, and Adzovor, 2015). Most of these service jobs are in retail, wholesale, and maintenance. If the largest revenue-generating sector is heavily dependent on imports to create jobs, which depicts that the country is not creating any form of innovation and shift in the line of value creation in terms of products.

Manufacturing/Production

Manufacturing combines human, material, and capital resources to make products which from the economic point of view is preferred to the industrial sector. The industrial sector is a high-value creating sector that can impact the economy positively since new products created can boost the go-to-market sector and even create a surplus for exports. The Industry sector generated GH¢128.4 billion which is 28.4 percent of total revenue while revenue from Institutional Agriculture is GH¢5.4 billion, representing 1.2 percent. The data generated from the survey suggest that the estimated stock of assets at the end of the reference period is GH¢172.9 billion. The Industry sector’s total assets amount to GH¢107.8 billion, which constitutes 62 percent of the total assets(Krakah, Agyaho, and Adzovor, 2015). The total value of inventory for all establishments is GH¢35.9 billion of which GH¢18.4 billion, representing 51.3 percent, is in the Services sector. For inventories/stocks held, the Industry sector has GH¢17.3 billion, representing 48.3 percent, while the remaining GH¢144.1 million, representing less than one percent, is in the Institutional Agriculture sector. The sector employs 23.7% of the working population according to the IBES research. The data presented shows that the manufacturing/production stage of the Product process in the country is relatively having less impact on the country’s national development. Attention should be paid to the fact that within the Industry sector, the mining and quarrying subsector has a value of GH¢ 574.3 million (95.8%) out of the GH¢ 599.4 million of Intangible assets in the Industry sector (Krakah, Agyaho, and Adzovor, 2015). These intangible assets include Intellectual Properties, Trademarks, patents of designs, and others. These assets do not depreciate, they become valuable with time, especially when there is continuous effort to improve on them.

Design Stage

The design is analogous to the research and development, this stage is responsible for the core competencies of the nation. The nation’s ability to solve its problem by its innovations, find the use of its numerous resources, and build new industries is dependent on its ability to invent, solve problems and continue the circle of growing technologies. A country like Switzerland invests over USD 25 billion in research and development (R&D) annually, which makes it one of the largest R&D investors in the world. Two-thirds of all R&D is funded by the private sector (Research and Development, no date). The pattern can be viewed in North America, European, and Asian countries. There are a lot of firms and companies dedicated to developing products, materials, industrial processes, and new technologies to shift the value curve in nations that take their industrialization seriously. The quality of human resources being produced by the nation calls for serious attention for a strategic look into the companies that are focused on being design companies. These companies have the potential to kick-start a real industrial revolution by empowering entrepreneurs, businesses, and inventors to bring their ideas into reality

Effects of the design industry on a national economic output

It is very important to draw the attention of manufacturers, entrepreneurs, and national planners to the potential of design on effective manufacturing, to improve product’s competitiveness and innovativeness. Investment in design across the board in all industries will have a tremendous effect on the national economic output, it will strengthen trust in local products, make them more competitive, and put the local industry in a position to compete with imports since the innovation is faster, efficient and cost-effective manufacturing methods will be developed. Design investments pay off, the size of means, however, which manufacturers are willing to allocate to design activities, depends on several factors, including design awareness of business circles, the financial situation of the company, and the level of R&D investments(Grzecznowska, 2005).

The design has largely been perceived as an instrument that can support economic development since it is a factor of innovation. In 2001 international consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers inquired managers if the design had been recently the strategic target of their firm’s activities. The firms in the sample were ordered according to their financial important strategic tool. A similar answer was given by ¾ of another 25 percent of the enterprises with the best financial performance(Stamm, 2002).

Research conducted in the United States, America, Britain, Germany, and other developed countries showed that design is essential to product innovation and contributes to the performances of companies. Yearly, companies increase their budget allocation for designs by 8-10 percent (Gemser, 2001).

The positive effect of a strong design industry (creative and engineering) can be viewed in a country with thriving economies. The quality of products, the product’s competitiveness, and the effect it has on the whole value chain and process of getting the market into the hands of clients have a direct and indirect impact on economies.

Conclusion

The design stage in the Product Process and paying attention to design as a method of solving problems and innovating is very important to a country’s growth in terms of capacity. Professionally, design can greatly create a positive shift in technologies, processes that go a long way to create a self-sustainable ecosystem for industries to strive for and great products to be built. Design companies led by young talented Ghanaians should be engaged and powered by both enterprises, government, and even individual investors to lead the innovation, building of great products, processes, and industrial solutions.

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