Overview

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has traditionally been employed for "new" product development, but generally it has been applied to revisions, or model upgrades, not to brand-new products. Methods such as "listening to the voice of the customer" are not very useful when the customer has never seen the type of product you are trying to develop. So how can you successfully learn the requirements for products that are new to the customer? This chapter will review the existing approaches in QFD, and some new methods for defining customer needs for brand-new products.

One promising approach is the "Mind of the Customer" approach employed by the Theory of Constraints (TOC). The TOC Thinking Process tools can identify the customer's core problem and core conflict. Then you can use them to develop a solution beyond the experience of the customer, and plan the solution's acceptance and implementation.

This complementary approach shows the synergy between TOC (traditionally used for "tweaking the deal") and QFD (traditionally used for "tweaking the details") in developing brand-new products.

Chapter Outline

• Introduction

• Defining Brand-New Needs

• Tools

• Last Steps

• Layers of Resistance

• Conclusion

• Acknowledgments

• References

• About the Author