Quality and New-Product Development


W. E. Deming, often named as the father of modern quality management, discussed consumerism as people's desire to improve their lives, especially in this Information Age where it is easy to see how others live. Trade is necessary to accomplish this, and trade depended on quality, which exists "if it helps somebody and enjoys a good and sustainable market." He warned that it is insufficient to merely satisfy customers, build loyalty, and eliminate defects. Customers access information and are rapid learners, and will switch if they think they will come out ahead. "It is necessary to innovate, to predict the needs of the customer, give him more" [Deming].

We must continuously investigate what product or service would help our customers more. They demand improvements in style, comfort, performance, and functionality, whatever these words mean in their minds. Traditional quality methods which focus on improving established products and processes have spawned new approaches, such as Quality Function Deployment (QFD), that better address the new-product development (NPD) process.

Traditional market researchers, long the bastion of NPD activities, are also finding that QFD can lead to a clearer definition of customer needs, better product concepts, and improved communication to internal operations that must then produce and deliver the product. Using tools and techniques from Comprehensive QFD

  • Rubbermaid was able to significantly improve the consumer panel acceptance rate of its new-product concepts [Rings, Barton, and Mazur].

  • Host-Marriott was able to identify an underserved market of business women air travelers and offer them a wide choice of bagels baked fresh in the airport concourse, resulting in sales doubling in just 30 days [Lampa and Mazur].

  • MD Robotics, a supplier of robotic arms to NASA, was stymied in building an animatronic triceratops for Universal Studios Florida's new Jurassic Park attraction, until the MD Robotics team visited a children's petting zoo to see what customers really cared about [Bolt and Mazur].

QFD goes beyond the product, however. True to Deming's belief that quality requires management and leadership, QFD addresses both the quality of the product and the management of the process to develop it. The QFD tools for developing the quality of the product are well known and include the "House of Quality," Affinity Diagrams, Hierarchy Diagrams, and so on. Lesser known are those for managing the product development process.

In Mizuno and Akao's pioneering work in QFD in the 1960s, value engineering techniques such as function analysis were applied not just to the product functions, but also to improve the business and operation functions of the NPD organization [Mizuno and Akao]. Tables, hierarchies, flowcharts, and Quality Assurance Networks were the tools of choice. In more recent years, Akao has integrated ISO 9000 and related methods to improve NPD organizational effectiveness [Akao and Mazur], and to examine the internal back-office activities of service organizations [Akao and Inayoshi] and hospitals [Akao and Fujimoto].

Modern Quality Tools

In addition to QFD, numerous tools and techniques can aid new-product developers. This chapter will identify those I call "quality" tools because they meet the following criteria:

  • They are measurable or use metrics.

  • They systematically follow defined steps with input, analysis, and output.

  • They create documentation for review and reuse.

This chapter does not provide an exhaustive list of tools and their utility to NPD, and readers may e-mail regarding omissions and errors to glenn@mazur.com. In this chapter, we will examine the following tools, listed here in alphabetical order (readers wishing to better familiarize themselves with them will find a list of resources at the end) of the chapter:

  • The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), including structure and prioritization of judgment criteria, prioritization of alternatives, and the Analytic Network Process (ANP)

  • The Balanced Scorecard, a system that measures and manages corporate goals such as mission, vision, customer, and employee satisfaction

  • Blitz QFD, a fast, matrix-less approach to addressing only the most critical customer needs

  • Conjoint Analysis, a mathematical model of determining consumer preferences

  • Consumer Encounters, which combines gemba visits and consumer panel testing

  • Customer Integrated Decision Making (CIDM), a business front end to QFD

  • de Bono's creativity methods, including Lateral Thinking, Provocation, and Six Thinking Hats

  • Deming's approach to quality, including his 14 Points and System of Profound Knowledge

  • The Gemba Visit, an observational approach to consumer behavior to uncover true requirements

  • Hoshin Planning, to develop, target, and deploy strategic initiatives

  • The Kano Model, a unique interviewing method using paired inverse questions to differentiate exciting, normal, and expected quality

  • Kansei Engineering, a customer-driven approach to industrial design, including Semantic Differential, Quantification Methods, and Information Systems

  • Lead User Research, a method for collaborating with technologically savvy users to develop breakthrough concepts for new products

  • Lean Manufacturing, based on Toyota's Production System, which aims to cut the non-value-added "fat" out of manufacturing systems

  • The New Lanchester Strategy, which uses war and game theory and operations research to identify strategic market and product opportunities, including market share profiling, strategies for the strong, and strategies for the weak

  • Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP), a set of skills for psychologically influencing people, such as body language, verbal cues, and so on

  • Project Management, including the Critical Path Method (CPM), Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), and Gantt charts

  • Pugh Concept Selection, a method to evaluate and improve new concepts

  • QFD (Comprehensive), including its many deployments of Organization, Schedule, Core Competencies Matrix, Customer Segments Table, Customer Process Table, Voice of Customer Tables, "House of Quality," Function, Technology, Reliability, Capability (Tech. Map), Pugh Concept, Parts, Test, Manufacturing, Production, and Task

  • Reliability, to prevent defects from being introduced during product design, including three types of FMEA and Fault Tree Analysis

  • Seeds to Needs QFD, a technology-driven form of QFD

  • The Seven Management and Planning (7 MP) Tools, a set of tools for managers to collect qualitative data and solve organizational and design problems

  • The Seven Product Planning (7PP) Tools, a system to use market research tools more effectively

  • The Seven Quality Control (7QC) Tools, a set of tools for frontline employees to collect quantitative data and solve quality problems

  • Six Sigma, an update of Total Quality Management (TQM) methods, including SPC, Statistical Quality Control (SQC), and analysis of variance (ANOVA)

  • Software Engineering tools to better understand processes

  • Stage-Gate, which systematically applies go/no go decisions throughout the NDP process

  • Strategic Information Systems (SIS) to use point-of-sale purchase information to seamlessly coordinate and forecast consumer purchases

  • Supply Chain Management

  • Taguchi Methods for Design of Experiments, Loss Function, and Design Optimization

  • The Theory of Constraints to understand how to increase throughput of products into customers' hands, including Thinking Process, Trees, Layers of Resistance, and Critical Chain

  • TQM methods for improving the quality of products and processes, including Daily Management, Kaizen, QI Story, 5S, poka yoke, Total Production Maintenance and Total Preventive Maintenance, quality control (QC), and quality assurance (QA)

  • TRIZ, a Russian system of inventive problem solving, including Table of Contradictions, Problem Formulator, Innovative System Questionnaire, ARIZ, Anticipatory Failure Determination, Directed Evolution, and Su-Field Analysis

  • Value Engineering, a dogged approach to uncovering cost reduction opportunities and improving product function, including FAST diagrams, value analysis, and function analysis

New-Product Development Process

New-product design and development is a multidisciplinary activity that involves different people at different times, and will vary according to the company, its customers, and the subject product. In a landmark study, Robert Cooper surveyed 123 industrial companies regarding how well they performed their new-product development process; the results showed that for the 13 most common NPD phases, companies averaged a rating between 5.27 and 6.96 on a scale of 10 [Cooper] (see Figure 27.1). The author believes that the quality tools mentioned earlier could help improve the NPD process.

Figure 27.1. Self-evaluation of NPD efforts


Although Figure 27.1 is by no means exhaustive, marketers, engineers, and quality professionals should find it useful for improving the quality of the NPD process by integrating the traditional quality methods with marketing methods and creativity methods. No single project needs every tool because time-to-market would suffer. Rather, it is recommended that each organization review their NPD process, starting with the phases Cooper found weak (marked with a *), and apply whichever tools are necessary to strengthen this most important business activity.




Design for Trustworthy Software. Tools, Techniques, and Methodology of Developing Robust Software
Design for Trustworthy Software: Tools, Techniques, and Methodology of Developing Robust Software
ISBN: 0131872508
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 394

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net