|
|
Product Planning and Design Providing products that our customers want to buy must be central to any "for profit" organisation. Given the intense competition in most markets today, companies that fail to develop new products expose themselves to great risk. Yet, the business of new product development is in itself a high risk endevour. Some studies have shown that up to 50 percent of consumer products, 25 percent of industrial products and 20 percent of services fail to gain enough market acceptance to return their development cost. There are many causes of new product failure. A high level executive pushing a favorite idea, a good idea but the market is over estimated, poor design or poor product positioning, over run development costs forcing out the margin, over run of development time causing the product to be overtaken by a competitor. Our experience has led us to the conclusion that although some products fail because of a lack of creativity, most fail because of a lack of structure and process surrounding development and design. We view the development of a new product as an eight step concurrent process combining a series of proven tools and techniques, used by world class organisations, with a rigorous review at the end of each stage. 1. Asses the opportunity. Will it make a profit directly or indirectly and how much over what period. 2. Definition. Listen to the voice of the customer, what is he or she looking for? and How could we fulfill the desire? 3. Develop the product. It is widely recognised that 80 percent of the cost of most products is committed in the design phase. Involve everyone including suppliers, assembly and customer service. 4. Manufacturing and Launch Ramp-Up. This phase involves material sourcing, the make or buy decisions realisation of the manufacturing process and manufacturing quality planning, as well as the production and testing and evaluation of Beta production models. 5. Launch includes sales planning, launch planning and putting in place an effective customer service plan. 6. Sales and Service. If the previous five steps have been effective this should represent only support of ongoing manufacture and sales. 7. End of life, a vital phase of the process. Businesses can incur high levels of cost in continuing to sell products that have reached the end of their life. Use of this structured methodology has proved very effective in reducing product development times, product cost and early life warranty costs as well putting the organisation in a position to pull the plug on a suspect project before large amounts of money are irrevocably committed.
|
Send mail to Vickie.Turp@Back-On-Track.co.uk with
questions or comments about this web site.
|
