Product and Service Development

Question 1

Method for translation of customer requirements into technical requirements

Answer 1

Quality function deployment

Used for definition of customer requirement. Translates voice of customer to engineering characteristics. Identify, classify and weights customer desire and find relevant engineering characteristics.

Question 2

What are the steps of Quality function deployment

Answer 2

1. Voice of the customer: identify customer needs stated by benefits of p/s. Determined by personal interviews /focus group.
2. Needs are structured into hierarchy and weighted
3. Customer perception of firms current products and competitive products
4. Voice of customer -> voice of engineer. Physical measurable requirements/technical attributes fulfilling customer needs.
5. What design attributes influence which customer needs and how much.
6. Interrelationships between customer requirements and quality elements
7. Target and goals

Question 3

Building a service blueprint

Answer 3

• Graphical representation of the service workflow. Designing and organizing the visibility and actions between customer and service provider. Evidence for service delivery
• Tool for new services, improving existing and ensure quality. Also used for training.
• Identify line of interaction and line of visibility. Customer actions, related sequence activities and linkages between. Ensure quality provided

Question 4

Service blueprint critical components - Draw (Bitner, Ostrom, Morgan)

Answer 4

• Customer are central in the creation of blueprint -> first
• Line of interaction separates the customers from visible service providers (face-to-face)
• Backstage/invisible contact employee action (“line of visibility”).
• Support processes: activities by employees not in contact with customers.

Question 5

Target Costing: What companies benefit the most?

Answer 5

• Assembly-oriented industries with diversification of their product line (not repetitive process industries with homogen products)
• Must develop dynamic systems for constantly reduce cost during planning, design and development stages of PLC

Question 6

What is target costing?

Answer 6

• Dynamic, constantly pushing for improvement, respond to customer needs
• Marketing, Accounting and manufacturing work together
• Product diversity: increasing types of products produced. helps manage costs
• Short life cycles -> must reduce costs in planning, design and devlopment stage

Question 7

How to avaoid fallancy of “perfect planning and attempt to get it right the first time”? (12)

Answer 7

1. Plan in small batches
2. Test the hypotheses constantly and use new info to adapt
3. Constant interaction with customers
4. Technical and market test asap ex simulations, prototypes, pilot customer test
5. Count the cost of delay into decision making factor
6. Experiment with smaller batches
7. Development plan as a hypotheses that will evolve with new info
8. Only start product with full commitment
9. Aim for simplicity: what can be removed?
10. Test early, fast and frequently
11. Overlapping and iterative process design
12. Focus on quick feedback instead of first-pass success

Question 8

Gap analysis - Which are the gaps

Answer 8

Approach to analyze service quality.

1. Not knowing what customer expect: Gap between expected service quality and management perception of customer expectation
2. Wrong definitions of standards and specifications: between management perceptions of customer expectations and specification of service
3. Fail to meet the specifications: specification of services and actual service
4. Promise too much: between actual service and customer oriented communication
5. Unmet expectation: between expected service quality and perceived service qality

Question 9

Apply the Gap Analysis on the CLEANinc AG. Negative feedback after introducing special services.

Purely sales oriented and highly competitive to increase willingness to work and higher sales volume but relationship between service employees is suffering

Answer 9

G1: Not knowing what customer expect:
High competition and not enough horizontal communication. Sales rep didnt wanna help each other with critical market information

G4: Promise too much
False incentives in sales lead to competitive thinking between sales rep which tended to exaggeration and overstated promises

Cure: encourage collaboration of sales and marketing. Top mng must adjust the incentive system to collaborate goals. Team incentive. Right balance between short-term sales and long-term goals customer satisfaction oriented.