Ch 4 CED (Concept in Engineering Design)

CHAPTER FOUR
12/5/2016
Lecture notes of Concepts in Engineering Design
Chapter 4
Prepared by Prem Kumar Soni
1

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
2
LECTURE NOTE
ON
CHAPTER FOUR
PREPARED BY
PREM KUMAR SONI
ASST. PROF.
LNCTS

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
3

PRODUCT
12/5/2016
Chapter 4
4
 An article or substance that is manufactured or refined for sale.
Such as "dairy products“
 A good, idea, method, information, object or service created as a
result of a process and serves a need or satisfies a want. It has a
combination of tangible and intangible attributes (benefits, features,
functions, uses) that a seller offers a buyer for purchase.
 For example a seller of a toothbrush not only offers the physical
product but also the idea that the consumer will be improving the
health of their teeth.

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
5
Product (business): an item that ideally satisfies a market's
want or need
Product (project management): a deliverable or set of
deliverables that contribute to a business solution

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
6

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
7

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
8

Product Life-Cycle
12/5/2016
Chapter 4
9
Product life cycle (PLC) is the course that a product’s
sales and profits take over its lifetime
 Product development
 Introduction
 Growth
 Maturity
 Decline

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
10
Product life cycle (PLC) describes:
• Product class
• Product form
• Brand

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
11
Product classes have the longest life cycles, with sales of
many product classes in the mature stage for a long time
Product forms have the standard PLC— shape, introduction,
rapid growth, maturity, and decline
Brands have changing PLCs due to competitive threats

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
12

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
13
Adoption : the action or fact of adopting or being
adopted.

Product Life-Cycle
12/5/2016
Chapter 4
14
Introduction stage is when the new product is first
launched
 Takes time
 Slow sales growth
 Little or no profit
 High distribution and promotion expense

Product Life-Cycle
12/5/2016
Chapter 4
15
Growth stage is when the new product satisfies the market
• Sales increase
• New competitors enter the market
• Price stability or decline to increase volume
• Consumer education
• Profits increase
• Promotion and manufacturing costs gain economies of scale
• Product quality increases
• New features
• New market segments and distribution channels are entered

Product Life-Cycle
12/5/2016
Chapter 4
16
Maturity stage is a long-lasting stage of a product that has
gained consumer acceptance
 Slowdown in sales
 Many suppliers
 Substitute products
 Overcapacity leads to competition
 Increased promotion and R&D to support sales and
profits

Product Life-Cycle
12/5/2016
Chapter 4
17
Decline stage is when sales decline or level off for
an extended time, creating a weak product
 Maintain the product
 Harvest the product
 Drop the product

Additional Product and Service
Considerations
12/5/2016
Chapter 4
18
Product Decisions and Social Responsibility
Public policy and regulations regarding developing and
dropping products, patents, quality, and safety

Additional Product and Service
Considerations
12/5/2016
Chapter 4
19
International Product and Service Marketing
Challenges
• Determining what products and services to
introduce in which countries
• Standardization versus customization
• Packaging and labeling
• Customs, values, laws

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
20

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
21

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
22

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
23

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
24

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
25

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
26

Identification of customer needs
12/5/2016
Chapter 4
27

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
28

Why identify customer needs?
Ensure that the product customer-focused and no
critical needs are missed or forgotten
Identify latent (hidden) and explicit needs
 Fact base for justifying the product specs.
Archival record of the customer needs
Develop a common understanding of customer
needs among members of the development team
12/5/201629
Chapter 4

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
30

Concept Development Plan
12/5/201631
Chapter 4

Subtle Distinction: Needs & Product
Specs.
 Needs are largely independent of any particular
product we might develop; a team should be able
to identify customer needs without knowing if or
how it will eventually address those needs.
 Specifications do depend on the concept we select.
The specifications for the product we finally
choose to develop will depend on what is
technically and economically feasible and on what
our competitors offer in the marketplace, as well as
on customer needs.
12/5/201632
Chapter 4

Similar Terms
 Other terms used for Customer Needs in industrial
practice:
 Customer attributes
 Customer requirements
12/5/201633
Chapter 4

Five-Step method to Identify
Customer Needs
1. Gather raw data from customers
2. Interpret the raw data in terms of customer needs
3. Organize the needs into a hierarchy of primary,
secondary, and (if necessary) tertiary needs
4. Establish the relative importance of needs
5. Reflect on the results and the process
12/5/201634
Chapter 4

Mission Statement
12/5/201635
Chapter 4

Step 1: Gather Raw Data from
Customers
1. Interviews
2. Focus groups
3. Observing the product in use
12/5/201636
Chapter 4

1.Interviews
 Development team members discuss needs with a
single customer.
 Interviews usually conducted in the customer’s
environment and typically last 1-2 hours.
12/5/201637
Chapter 4

2. Focus Groups
A moderator (a team member or a professional
market researcher) facilitates a two-hour
discussion with a group of 8 to 12 customers
Typically conducted in a special room equipped
with 2-way mirror and videotaped
Participants are usually paid a modest fee ($50 to
$100 each); total cost about $2500
 Firms that recruit participants, moderate focus
groups an/or rent facilities are listed in the
telephone book under “market research”
12/5/201638
Chapter 4

3. Observing the Product in Use
 Reveals important details about customer behavior
 For example, a customer painting a house may use
a screwdriver to open paint cans in addition to
driving screws.
 Observation may be completely passive, without
any direct interaction with the customer, or may
involve working side by side with a customer,
allowing members of the team to develop firsthand
experience using the product
12/5/201639
Chapter 4

3. Observing the Product in Use
 For some products such as do-it-yourself tools,
actually using the products is simple and natural
 For others, such as surgical instruments, the team may
have to use the products on surrogate tasks (e.g.,
cutting fruit instead of human tissue when developing
a new scalpel)
12/5/201640
Chapter 4

Choosing Customers
 Griffin and Hauser estimated that 90 percent of the
customer needs for picnic coolers were revealed
after 30 interviews.
 In another case study , they estimated that 98
percent of the customer needs for a piece of office
equipment were revealed after 25 hours of data
collection in both focus groups and interviews.
 As a practical guideline for most products,
conducting fewer than 10 interviews is probably
inadequate and 50 interviews are probably too
many.
12/5/201641
Chapter 4

Interview Logistics
 For example, if a 10-person team is divided into five
pairs and each pair conducts 6 interviews, the team
conducts 30 interviews in total
12/5/201642
Chapter 4

Lead Users
 Needs can be identified more efficiently by
interviewing a class of customers called lead users.
 Lead users are customers who experience needs
months or years ahead of the majority of the market
and stand to benefit substantially from product
innovations.
12/5/201643
Chapter 4

Lead Users
 These customers are particularly useful sources of data for
two reasons:
1. They are often able to articulate their emerging needs,
because they have had to struggle with the inadequacies of
existing products.
2. They may have already invented solutions to meet their
needs.
12/5/201644
Chapter 4

Which customer to select?
 The choice of which customers to interview is
complicated when several different groups of
people can be considered “ the customer.”
 For many products, one person (the buyer) makes
the buying decision and another person (the user)
actually uses the product.
 A good approach is to gather data from the end
user of the product in all situations, and in case
where other types of customers and stakeholders
are clearly important, to gather data from these
people as well.
12/5/201645
Chapter 4

Customer Selection Matrix
12/5/201646
Chapter 4

The Art of eliciting Customer Needs
Data
 Gathering needs data is very different from a sales
call: the goal is to elicit an honest expression of
needs, not to convince a customer of what he or she
needs.
12/5/201647
Chapter 4

Interview Questions
When and why do you use this type of product?
Walk us through a typical session using the product
What do you like about the existing products?
What do you dislike about the existing products?
What issues do you consider when purchasing the
product?
What improvements would you make to the product?
12/5/201648
Chapter 4

General Hints for Effective Interaction
with Customers
Go with the flow.
Use visual stimuli and props.
Suppress preconceived hypotheses about the
product technology.
Have the customer demonstrate the product and/or
typical tasks related to the product.
Be alert for surprises and the expression of latent
needs.
Watch for nonverbal information.
12/5/201649
Chapter 4

Documenting interactions with
Customers
1. Audio recording
2. Notes
3. Video recording
4. Still photography
12/5/201650
Chapter 4

Audio Recording
 Making an audio recording of the interview is very
easy.
 Transcribing the recording into text is very time
consuming, and it can be expensive to hire someone to
do it.
 Could be intimidating to some customers
12/5/201651
Chapter 4

Notes
Most common method for documenting
Designate one person as the primary note-taker and
have the other person concentrate on effective
questioning.
Notetaker should strive to capture some of the
wording of every customer statement verbatim.
Transcribe notes immediately after the interview to
create a description of the interview that is very
close to an actual transcript; sharing of insights
between the interviewers.
12/5/201652
Chapter 4

Video Recording
 Almost always used to document a focus group session.
 Useful for documenting observations of the customer in
the use equipment and/or using existing products.
 Useful for bringing new team members “ up to speed”
and as raw material for presentations to upper
management.
 Multiple viewings of video recordings of customers in
action often facilitate the identification of latent
customer needs.
12/5/201653
Chapter 4

Still Photography
 Taking photographs provides many of the benefits of video
recording.
 The primary advantages of still photography are ease of
display of the photos, excellent imagine quality, and readily
available equipment.
12/5/201654
Chapter 4

Final Result of Data Gathering Phase
 A set of raw data, usually in the form of customer statements
but frequently supplemented by video recordings or
photographs.
 Please remember to: write thank-you notes to the customers
involved in the data gathering process.
12/5/201655
Chapter 4

Step 2: Interpret Raw Data in terms
of Customer Needs
12/5/201656

Customer Data Template
12/5/201657

Step 3: Organize the Needs into a
Hierarchy
 The result of step 1 and 2 should be a list of 50 to
300 need statements.
 The goal of step 3 is to organize these needs into a
hierarchical list:
 Primary needs
 Secondary needs
 Tertiary needs
 Organizing the needs into hierarchical list is
intuitive
12/5/201658
Chapter 4

Needs Organization Procedure
1. Print or write each need statement on a separate
card or self-stick note.
2. Eliminate redundant statements.
3. Group the cards according to the similarity of
the needs they express.
4. For each group, choose a label.
5. Consider creating super groups consisting of two
to five groups.
6. Review and edit the organized needs statements.
12/5/201659
Chapter 4

Hierarchical List
12/5/201660
Chapter 4

Step 4: Establish the Relative Importance
of the Needs
 Useful in making trade-off decisions
 Assign numerical importance weights for needs
 Two basic approaches to the task:
1.Consensus of the team members based on their
experience with customers
2.Importance assessment based on further customer
surveys
12/5/201661
Chapter 4

Importance Weights: Consensus or
Customer Survey?
 Obvious trade-off between the two approaches is
cost and speed versus accuracy.
 Few customer will respond to a survey asking
them to evaluate the importance of 100 needs.
 Typically the team will work with only subset of
the needs. A practical limit on how many needs
can be addressed in a customer survey is about
50.
12/5/201662
Chapter 4

Example
12/5/201663
Chapter 4

Step 5 : Reflect on the Results and the
Process
 Some question to ask include:
 Have we interacted with all of the important types of
customers in our target market?
 Are we able to see beyond needs related only to existing
products in order to capture the latent needs of our target
customers?
 Are there areas of inquiry we should pursue in follow-up
interviews or surveys?
 Which of the customers we spoke would be good
participants in our on-going development efforts?
12/5/201664
Chapter 4

Step 5 : Reflect on the Results and the
Process
 Some question to ask include:
 What do we know now that we didn’t know when we
started? Are we surprised by any of the needs?
 Did we involve everyone within our organization who
needs to deeply understand customer needs?
 How might we improve the process in future efforts?
12/5/201665
Chapter 4

12/5/2016
Chapter 4
66

THE END
12/5/2016
Chapter 4
67

Ch 4 CED (Concept in Engineering Design)

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

La actualidad más candente

La actualidad más candente (20)

Destacado

Destacado (20)

Similar a Ch 4 CED (Concept in Engineering Design)

Similar a Ch 4 CED (Concept in Engineering Design) (20)

Más de Prem Kumar Soni

Más de Prem Kumar Soni (20)

Último

Último (20)

Ch 4 CED (Concept in Engineering Design)