Product Leadership by Integrating Product Attributes with Function Analysis

摘要

By understanding our customer needs better than our competition and delivering solutions to meet those needs better that anyone else, we can achieve product leadership. Product Leadership is when the customer makes the decision to buy our product over competitive products. Product Leadership is leading businesses to profitable growth through product innovations. Recently, I spoke to one of my friends who works for an industry leader, and he mentioned a new cool gadget that he is working on. After hearing a long lecture on why this will be a great innovative product, I asked him about the cost. He gave me a strange look and I realized I had wandered into a no flyzone! But isn't this something that each of us face as we work to bring innovative products to the market place? If your product is truly innovative, you must be able to get a premium from the consumer, right? Then why should we be bothered about saving a few dollars on the cost? While that is an interesting argument, one needs to remember best cost is a mentality - you either have the mentality or you don't. It is difficult to pick and choose. If you do not have the best cost position, your innovation may not be sustainable in a competitive market. If you are really looking at lengthening the life cycle of an innovative product, having the best cost is almost mandatory. However, it is a delicate balance. How do we drive best cost without compromising on the quality of innovation? The new product development process begins with the identification of customer requirements. The customer functions are derived from the customer requirements. These customer functions will be used to validate the design. Most manufacturing companies use Quality Function Deployment (QFD) or House of Quality (HOQ) tools to determine the relationship between the customer requirements and the technical requirements. Most of the time, the House of Quality will have many data rows and it is very difficult to manage for new product development teams. In addition, the Voice Of Customer (VOC) data is dynamic in nature and the customer requirements don't have cost elements to help prioritize product attributes. The heart and soul of Value Engineering (VE) has always been the analysis of functions. Lawrence D. Miles, the "Father of Value Analysis" stated that, "all the customer wants is function". The purpose of this case study is to explore how to enhance the usage of Function Analysis/FAST Diagramming by integrating product attributes in order to achieve product leadership. Many professionals feel that the main purpose or objective of function analysis is to identify the greatest opportunity for value improvement. I agree with this statement, however, at same time it is very important to capture product attributes as part of functional analysis otherwise the product may not able to meet customer requirements/functions. In writing this case study, I am assuming that the reader has some basic exposure to Value Engineering training or practice.