A Simple Example Would Be The Conversion From Analog To Digital. May Be A

A simple example would be the conversion from analog to digital. May be a decade or two ago, there were some systems which were still concentrating on analog devices. Now they are hardly seen. When such a drastic change is happening (a decade would not be drastic for us, but for large scale manufacturing plants to change their whole technology from analog to digital would cost millions of dollars even though it is spread over multiple years), it would be highly beneficial to a company to be well informed before hand rather than changing at the spur of a moment. Research is more concentrated on the customer / user than any thing else. What ever user wants has to be done and it would be much more preferable to know the user choices before hand doing our own research, rather than getting a dissatisfied comment from him.
Planning: planning is another significant part of the whole process. As I mentioned earlier, it is always good for the designers to know the internal business processes of the company before hand rather than knowing them later on and trying to modify the design. Planning takes care of this step. With participation from wide variety of areas all across the board, it becomes simpler for the designer to know and understand different views and angles about a manufacturing process so that the overall design is acceptable and enjoyable by everyone.
Communication: In a business process, there are always instances when the customer thinks of some thing, the designer understand something else and the manufacturing guys create something completely different. Why does this happen? Lack of communication. Whose mistake is this? Nobody's. It is very important for a designer and his team to keep in constant touch with both the customers and the manufacturing guys at the same time. Designers are the only bridge between customers and manufacturers and they should be completely aware of the business process from both the sides. It is client's responsibility that he conveys the proper requirements to the designers so that they can re-convey them to their manufacturing guys, a small leak here and there can result in disaster. But does the client do this always? NO. So it becomes an additional burden on the designer to keep in constant touch with the customer and keep him posted of what is going on with the product, so that if there is some discrepancy, then the message is obtained instantly, same is the case with manufacturing people.
Implementation: the last step is implementation, mostly done by the manufacturing people but involves a little contribution from design team too. First of all, they may have to monitor the whole process and may be even test it thoroughly. Being the only people with complete knowledge of client's business requirements, they are also responsible for quality.
This is how a generic design process goes, let me stress the word generic again.