Omron hits a home run with a new mindset

Example of Omron products
(source: Omron youtube channel)

In a business magazine interview, the new Omron president, Mr. Ogino, described not only innovation in their new products displayed at the the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but also advances in the company's core beliefs about customers and product development.

Omron is an international medical device manufacturer that sells home healthcare devices such as blood pressure monitors, body weight and composition meters, and others.

Under Mr. Ogino's directives, Omron product developers now must investigate the validity of product concept from the customer's perspective and identify "true" customer needs. No longer are product features such as 'integrated,' 'compact,' 'easy to read,' and so forth sufficient.

"Tens of thousands people end up with amputations every year because of high blood sugar. We make blood glucose meters to make such incidents zero. We make nebulizers with a conviction to cure asthma during childhood. I make sure in our company that no product planning takes place without first making clear why we should make the product, what is the ultimate goal," says Mr. Ogino.

This new mindset, code-named "Project Zero" (meaning driving down users' adverse health events to zero), will not only help the company differentiate itself from other wearable technology manufacturers, but also it can bring them closer to becoming in compliance with the new ISO 16355 for QFD.  Here is how... Read the full article.

Learn the new tools...

Taxi of Tomorrow failing on today's needs?

Last year we discussed the "Taxi of Tomorrow," New York City's taxi design contest. We called attention to the peril of new product development without understanding stakeholders and offered some QFD perspectives.

Now that the winning model (Nissan) is being rolled out to replace the aging fleet of NYC cabs, are New Yorkers happy? Not so fast. The debate continues.

Taxi of Tomorrow
Nissan NV200
photo: mr.chopper / wikipedia

The Nissan model (photo right), based on a Japanese family van never tested in a commercial fleet until now, offers features such as a spacious interior, rear seat airbags, driver GPS, and charging ports for electronic devices.

The critics complained that the Nissan model is only a gasoline fueled vehicle (at least for now) and does not offer wheelchair accessibility.

Intriguingly, it caught our eyes that the contest decision makers (politicians, taxi and limousine commissioners, industry leaders) gravitated toward the established, practical product features for the final selection, such as Safety, Comfort, Passenger and Driver Amenities, and Economy.

In the pre-decision survey, the general public additionally voiced these important features: Environmental friendliness and forward-looking design fit for the international center of business, arts, and tourism.

What neither party articulated, during and after the contest, were the true needs of customers, especially the "latent" needs.

That may be why Uber, Lyft, and others are able to make a dent in the market share of traditional taxis. Note here, what types of vehicle it is or what amenities it is equipped with are no longer the differentiating points in this new competition.

This may come as shocking to those who worked hard to bring the winning design onto the streets of Manhattan. But with the entry of this new app-based, on-demand competition, the physical features that the Taxi of Tomorrow has focused have become irrelevant — as if the Taxi of Tomorrow addresses the needs of yesterday!

The city officials are hopeful the new taxi will bring back customers, but it seems they need more than an eye-catching new design to successfully compete in this new market.

How can they turn the Taxi of Tomorrow truly live up to its name?
Read more...

How to become a great salesperson

photo of big city apartments
photo courtesy of Roy Googin / wikipedia

Last week while apartment hunting with our newly graduated son, I got to meet one of the best sales people I ever met. I'll call her Brittany.

The challenge was this ⸺ the apartments she had ready for instant move-in were the unites that had two bedrooms and cost about $100 a month more than the one bedroom our son had budgeted.

While he hesitated, Brittany chatted with us about the graduation, our son's new job, and how often we would visit him. Then she struck:

"If he had a two bedroom apartment, you could stay with him!"

Immediately, I did the mental math of our 5-day graduation visit: $150/night for a hotel, $100/day for three meals for two people, etc. If we visited twice per year for five days, our hotel and meal cost would be more than double the difference between a one- and two-bedroom apartment.

Why doesn't he get the two-bedroom and we pay the extra $100/month. A definite win-win!

This is what good sales people do, and why they are so valuable on a QFD team. Brittany was able to quickly translate the feature of "two-bedroom" into the customer need of "parents can visit cheaply."

New Kano Model for better design decisions and hidden market opportunities

Many people wrongly assume that so-called Kano model (diagram on the right) describes the relationship between customer needs, fulfillment of product features, and satisfaction.

The1984 research, "Attractive Quality and Must-Be Quality" by N. Seraku, F. Takahashi, and N. Kano, Ph.D.,  measured satisfaction merely against the existence or absence of a feature. It did not and does not address customer needs.

Additionally, the Kano categories came from customer survey responding to inverse-paired questions. They were not and are not assigned by product engineers or producers.

The most serious error that people often make is the misleading "curved-arrow" that is often cited as shown in the above diagram. The inverse-paired question yields only two data points:  the "if" and the "if not". You can only draw a line (= linear) with two data points. It takes three data points to inscribe a curve!  This is why Glenn Mazur (QFD Institute), who translated Kano's original Japanese paper into English over two decades ago, wonders how many people who cite the Kano model actually read their study.

This problems was addressed by Mr. Harold Ross, a now retired General Motors engineer and a director of the QFD Institute. He called this the New Kano Model, which adds the necessary questions to draw the "curve" and use it to reveal hidden market segments and extrapolate better design decisions.

Using the Modern QFD tools that are taught in the QFD Black Belt^® course, you can then identify the invisible, moving target of customer satisfaction that the original Kano model does not address.

This new methodology will be presented at the 26th Symposium on QFD, December 5, 2014 in Charleston, South Carolina USA. It will include implementation examples of automotive industry, development of marketing and advertising content, as well as identifying clearer performance targets for each customer segment.

Everyone is welcomed at this symposium, regardless of your QFD knowledge.
Here is how to attend.

Bonehead specs are not customer needs

An automotive customer may demand these things from its vendor, for example:

• Performance level or specifications
• Features or functions
• Specific hardware or methods
• Complaint solutions or failure mode prevention
• Lower prices, etc.

In concept, the product performance, features, and methods outlined by the automaker may seem exciting. But sometimes satisfying these requirements still fails to satisfy the end customers (consumers).

Similarly, customers may express desires for such things as speed, engine power, braking performance, roomy interior, and so forth for a new car. Often these requirements show up in customer surveys, focus groups, various marketing research and even in consumer magazines.

The problem is that what you get from these stated requirements are specifications, not "customer needs." People often confuse the two. The distinction is critical for successful new product development.

"The stated customer wants are only a starting point in design. What they said they want is the best guesstimate of what they think the producer could deliver," says Glenn Mazur, executive director of the QFD Institute. "In New Product Development (NPD), the goal should be creating the future experience and value for the customers."

This is how to better-understand this:


The relationship between the customer needs and what customers tell you is similar to a fishbone diagram, with needs representing the "head" or a desired effect, and the specifications, functions, components, materials, etc. representing the "bones" or causal factors.

Customers are experts in "heads" and producers are experts in "bones." When customers give your bones instead of heads, you get "bonehead specs" ☺ where the customer mistakenly thinks their stated specs will meet their unstated needs. Then. when the product is delivered, it fails to fit their use, and they scream.

In the above automotive industry example,
Classical QFD using a 4-phase model and House of Quality matrix would lump all of the customer-stated requirements together and attempt to prioritize the results.  When you approach NPD that way, price and complaint issues dominate, and innovative product development gets inhibited.

Modern QFD, on the contrary, has specific tools for these:

• Identify what are product features and specs vs. what are customer needs
• Uncover 'unstated' customer needs
• Identify the unknown unknowns
• Determine what are 'true' customer needs (the foundation for highly competitive products)
• Set the needs priorities correctly

Modern QFD tools are strongest where you want to make a difference by widening the gap between merely meeting product specifications vs. satisfying the customer.

To truly build the "true customer needs" and innovation in your New Product Development, rather than the same old fixes of complaints and cost-pinching, we invite you to come learn the Modern QFD in the next public courses.

This advice also applies to those who have been doing Classical QFD for many years or learned the old QFD from books.

An Apple a day — Use QFD to systematize Steve Jobs' design genius beyond a single individual

In my opinion, late Steve Jobs was a rare individual who had such an intuitive grasp of the fundamentals of QFD thinking. For example, in the April 1, 1989 interview with Inc. Magazine, he was asked by reporters Bo Burlingham and George Gendron, "Where do great products come from?"

This is what Jobs said:

"I think really great products come from melding two points of view-the technology point of view and the customer point of view. You need both.

"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new. It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we'd given customers what they said they wanted, we'd have built a computer they'd have been happy with a year after we spoke to them-not something they'd want now..."

Let me put this in QFD perspective.

We see two common flows in the way QFD is practiced: forward and reverse. Forward QFD begins with the voice of the customer which is often a mixture of "what they want," that is product performance, features, and technology. Because customers rarely know what the future may bring, their voice is typically tied to the past or present.

As Jobs points out, the product may be sufficient for the past, but insufficient at the time of launch or during its useful life. You can ask customers what they want as a starting point of a QFD analysis. The tool for this analysis is the Customer Voice table; its purpose is to translate voice of customer (VOC) into true customer needs. In this table, we explore with customers why they want something.

For example, a customer in a café may state "I need a hot cup of coffee," but what they really need is "I am cold and I want to warm up." Using Jobs logic, you could produce a cup of coffee that was too hot to drink, thus forcing the customer to wait until it cooled down. You would give them what they asked (hot), but not really meet their needs (warm up).

In modern QFD, we define a customer need as being product-independent, and that is the first step in creating great product.  Read More ...

Is it advantageous to be first or to be better?

Newsweek magazine recently published an article "The Myth of First-Mover Advantage" about iTune entering the Internet radio business, thus challenging the well-established Pandora head-on. The article summarized the successes and failures of companies that are first-to-market.

This questions is commonly asked by QFD practitioners:
Is it advantageous to be first or to be better?

My thoughts:

Advantage belongs to first-movers if they continuously put themselves "out of business" before a new competitor does. This requires an on-going assessment of changing customer needs and producing corresponding features. QFD can mitigate the risk of first-mover's typical "technology push" mentality by building a "market pull" approach.

Customers will churn products as they mentally perform cost-benefit analyses of alternatives. Costs include purchase price, cost to change in terms of training, support, maintenance, disposal of old product, etc. To overcome these, the benefits of the new offering either by the original First-Mover or the new competitor must be overwhelmingly substantial in solving the customer problem, enabling a customer opportunity, or enhancing the customer's image.

Glenn

The joke is on us (consumers)

Take a look at this video. It is about a Google Japan project to develop a better interface for typing Japanese.

Owning to its complex writing system (several thousand Chinese characters mingled with two sets of 51 phonetic alphabets), keyboarding Japanese became feasible only in 1970s. Even today with advancements in software and AI, typing Japanese remains highly cumbersome, compared to Romance languages such as English, Spanish, French, etc.

So when Google Japan announced its intention to design a better way to type, the project sounded like a worthy effort.


Google Japan video, April 2013 (http://youtu.be/HzUDAaYMNsA)  Click "CC" for English caption.

Have you noticed the intriguing initial concept based on drum-playing? Granted, Google has always been known for quirky ideation, but many Japanese viewers thought this was an absurd, if interesting, departure from the traditional keyboard.

Alas, the complexity of the Japanese language necessitated infinite drums to be added (to accommodate thousands of characters), resulting in an inoperably massive drum assembly. Did you see that?

To solve this problem, the Google engineers did what many project teams typically do: They gathered in a meeting room to brainstorm.

Does it sound pretty normal to you, so far?

After many days of brainstorming, one day while waiting for a commuter train, an engineer had an epiphany: A split-flap input display system (the old-fashioned mechanism that flips panels to display departure/arrival information for trains, airplanes, etc.).

Did you see that?

Then comes the really eccentric part: Since people today prefer everything mobile, the Google team decides to build this new Japanese input system in the form of funky eye wear (Google glasses for the 19th century)!  Now you can type Japanese wherever you are simply by blinking your eyes.

See that?  What else did you notice?

The real scoop is, while users of Gmail in the US were greeted with the total ‘blue’ screen prank on April Fools’ Day, Google Japan made an elaborate effort to produce this video prank instead. What is interesting is that many people failed to discern the joke.

We showed this video to our colleagues in Japan, many whom are professors of Information Technology and Business. Here is what they said, which also resembles the comments of many Japanese Youtube viewers:

“It is an interesting concept, but I found it difficult to understand.”
“It looks hard to use for me, but young people like this?”
“The initial drum concept looked interesting; it is too bad that the final product departed from it.”
“Who is the wholesaler of this product? Can I get in touch?”

People did not get the joke, perhaps, because even today real life product development often resembles what the Google team portrayed in the video. That is, a team of experts gathers in a meeting room, discusses product ideas out of thin air, brainstorms design issues with each other, and eventually (hopefully) someone has a lucky break for a final product idea that might reflect solutions to the engineering problems at hand, but pay little regard to customer gemba and their real needs.

Without knowledge of customer-centric approaches like QFD and practical experience of how to implement the DFCV (design for customer value) such as gemba tools and maximum value table in Blitz QFD^®, the product development in this April Fools’ video came across to many as a rather reasonable, realistic way that many businesses still conduct product development. I hope yours is different.

Learn better ways of product development… QFD Green Belt^® Certificate Course

How to calculate customer value

Value to a customer = what he gets / what he gives.
We make a sale when this number is >1. Both the numerator and denominator are in the customer's domain; they determine what they get — benefit, and what they pay — price, effort to use, risk of change.

The problem with many quality methods is that they focus on what companies give — product and features, and not on what customers get — value and benefit.

That is why QFD is an essential tool. It is the best method I know that can link together the customer benefit and the product features, thus assuring that developers focus first and best where it matters most to the customer.

The trick is to understand what your customers want to get and what they will pay BEFORE you design. That way you don't have to keep fixing things later. Traditional House of Quality assumes you have complete and accurate customer needs. My 27 years of QFD experience tells me otherwise. You must go deeper than what customers tell you if you want a competitive advantage. This is what the modern Blitz QFD^® tools do.

The 2013 International QFD Symposium (ISQFD) will be held in Santa Fe this September. Come meet Dr. Akao (QFD founder) and learn these new Blitz tools.

“Did you find everything okay?”

It’s a question consumers hear on a daily basis, whether they’re at a grocery store, electronics store, sporting goods store or basically any kind of retail outlet.  Sometimes our answer is ‘yes’ and other times ‘no,’ but what never seems to change is the outcome from this little encounter.  Anyone reading this blog probably already understands why – because it’s not a service question, it’s a marketing statement.

Much like “Welcome!” from greeters at many mega stores, this simple line is meant to project a customer-first attitude amongst a store’s employees (and at no additional cost!,) however, unlike a throwaway greeting, this question represents a much greater missed opportunity.

It is not that the asker (often a cashier) is disingenuous when asking this question, but rather the question itself is problematic and their training does not enable them to deal with the voices of customers they receive.  It is an avenue for feedback, but it almost always leads to a dead end.

The most immediate problem with this question is that it’s vague and open to multiple interpretations by different customers.  One of the main principles of asking good questions is making sure the respondent actually knows what’s being asked.

The first possibility that springs to my mind is, “Was the process of finding specific product groups and making selections easily accomplished?” This can be broken down in at least three ways as follows:

• “Was our inventory organization logical to you?” 
• “Was our inventory accessible to you?”  and 
• “Did we provide enough information to help you decide?”  

There are likely more ways to break down the process of shopping, but it’s worth noting that an online store like Amazon, which has begun to enter the grocery business in some cities, can easily meet these needs without much extra effort through their existing online interface.  This makes it all the more important for today’s brick and mortar grocery stories to satisfy in these areas.

Another way to interpret the question is, “Do we carry the specific items you’re looking for?”  – either by item type or item brand. This is an issue of supply management and no amount of friendly customer service is going to help the customer get what they want on that current trip.

There might, however, be an easy and visible method for customer requisitions, which would not only please a customer but also guarantee a return visit when their item arrives.  This is often possible at electronics stores (although the process is far from visible or easy) but is rarely possible in grocery stores.  When a customer’s favorite brand of mustard or bread goes missing and they ask an employee why they no longer carry that item, they’re often met with an “I don’t know” which is neither helpful nor informative. The excruciating weakness of that response is that it could be!

Even when store representatives ask meaningful questions and their customers provide informative answers, they’re rarely trained with the necessary tools or provided a response channel to turn that voice of customer into helpful information.

Every time the question is asked, a store is in position to receive useful feedback, both positive and negative, yet that information goes nowhere; it gets stuck with a clerk who doesn’t know who to give it to or a manager who doesn’t want to receive it. “Did you find everything okay?” is a façade of customer-first thinking, and fortunately there’re ways to improve it.

An easy start is to ask better questions, and to make sure your representatives know how to respond when the customer's answer is “no.”  A working response channel from customer to representative to management is important, however this is dependent on a customer’s time, mood and memory and may lead to skewed results.

For instance, feedback on message boards tends to occur more when something has gone wrong, rather than when something has gone right.  Questionnaires sent out by grocery stores tend to be focused on their own product or process rather than the customer’s experience (or their desired shopping outcome), and by the time customers receive them, they may not remember all of the relevant details from their shopping encounter.  Furthermore, even if a customer did have difficulty searching through a store’s shelves and a cashier was able to help them, what good would it do if the customer had already waited in line and was about to pay (as they often are when the question is asked)?

For these reasons, going to the gemba is the most effective way to find customers’ needs in order to improve their shopping experience.  True customer-first thinking means discovering if they “found everything okay” (and everything it entails) before they check out of your store.

Ken Mazur

Related Read...

• Trusting Front Line Employees To Be Customer Advocates 

• Translating Voice of Customer into True Customer Needs 

• Electronic Medical Records in the Gemba 

• Service QFD and State-Transition Diagram

QFD at Holiday Time

The holiday season is a great time to sharpen our QFD skills. Here are some techniques that might make the celebrations and shopping a little easier.

• Gift shopping for someone? Instead of asking them what your should buy (a solution), try asking for what they need (what difficulties do they have at work or home, what opportunities do they wish for, how would they like others to see them)? This helps us practice the Customer Voice table where we translate VOC into true needs.

• Hard to choose among several options for a gift, a restaurant, or a party to attend? Practice your alternative selection technique.

1. First list your options.
2. Write down what is attractive about each option, and what is unattractive about each option. Convert unattractive statements into positive ones. For example, this restaurant is "too far away" becomes "nearby." These are your judgment criteria.
3. Prioritize the judgment criteria. For emotional decisions, AHP's pairwise decision making is a great way to work through them.
4. The highest priority judgment criteria will drive your decision. Look at which option best fulfills them. Feel comfortable that you made the best choice possible given all the wonderful options.

• Have to be in two places at once? Try TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving). See Glenn Mazur's web page http://www.mazur.net/triz/ for details.

1. Define your dilemma using the Engineering Parameters in Table 2 in the above link. For example, I am invited to two parties at the same time – my best friend and my in-laws. One contradiction is improve EP 26 Amount of Substance (I want to improve my pleasure for the afternoon) without the undesired result of EP 13 Stability of Object (I don't want my marriage to become unstable).
2. Look up the pair in the Table of Contradictions to find Inventive Principles 15, 2, 17, 40. Let's see what solutions we can invent.

    IP 15. Dynamicity.

1. Make an object or its environment automatically adjust for optimal performance at each stage of operation. Have the meal at your in-laws (so you can compliment her cooking) and dessert at your friends (so you can stay late).
2. Divide an object into elements which can change position relative to each other. Same as above, but decide that day where to go first.
3. If an object is immovable, make it movable or interchangeable. E-mail your suggestions to qfdi@qfdi.org

    IP 2. Extraction.

1. Extract (remove or separate) a "disturbing" part or property from an object.
2. Extract only the necessary part or property. Exchange gifts, have a drink at the in-laws and then see your friends.

    IP 17. Move to a new dimension.

1. Remove problems with moving an object in a line by two-dimensional movement (i.e. along a plane). Invite in-laws and friends to your house, instead. Have one party upstairs and the other downstairs.
2. Use a multi-layered assembly of objects instead of a single layer. Add pleasure to visiting your in-laws by inviting your friends to come with you. Or, have lunch with in-laws and dinner with friends.
3. Incline the object or turn it on its side. E-mail your suggestions to qfdi@qfdi.org

IP 40. Composite materials.

• Replace a homogeneous material with a composite one. Take two cars, and divide the family up so each can stay as long as they want at either party.

 

Young business travelers' technology needs

Over 15 years ago, the Delta Hotel chain in Canada sought to attract business travelers by being one of the first major hotel chains to offer business-oriented office suites. Notably, at the time, these suites included a computer which could allow business travelers to work on the road, instead of being “stranded” from the office in an era when laptops were costly and scarce.

Unfortunately, the designers of these rooms didn’t entirely understand the needs of their targeted customers or what being productive entailed to them (read details in "Close Encounter of the QFD Kind", a white paper PDF).  While the offices were fully furnished, the computers were not — they did not come with commonly used software packages, meaning the guest not only had to bring their own software disks with them but would also have to waste time installing the programs themselves, in order to get any use out of the computer besides Solitaire.

Today, we consider an office space, complete with Microsoft Office^® or Open Office^® as well as access to a printer, to be standard in any hotel chain, but do these actually make us more productive?  Technologically speaking, these accommodations are obviously better than what Delta offered years ago, however they represent an even more grievous misunderstanding of customers’ needs than was found on the blank computers back then.

From a QFD perspective, these computers are seen as a feature, and although they’ve been tweaked and upgraded over the years (their performance level is higher than ever), they address needs that have already been met by much better alternatives, and fail to address newer needs that have been enabled by changing technology.

Widespread usage of laptops and tablets have made office suite computers unneeded, the prevalence of proprietary software and custom remote login systems have made them unusable, and the nature of the internet and shared computer usage have made them unsafe. Furthermore, the original underlying need for productivity has been joined by the needs for entertainment and communication, and in that regard there is very little opportunity for hotel offices to compete with gaming laptops, Facetime^® or Skype^®.

Rather than trying to meet these needs by offering competing features, hotels should be trying to facilitate the features customers already have that meet their needs.  Simply put, this means replicating (or besting) the connectivity customers have on their laptops, tablets and phones that they travel with.

For example, many hotels advertise access to broadband. Often these connections, however, perform quite poorly on technical benchmarks (bandwidth tests) and outright fail on customer benchmarks (ability to watch Youtube videos, play games or video chat and so forth).  This can be exacerbated by poor cell phone coverage, which may force a customer to leave the hotel in order to be reachable at all.  If there’s any doubt that failing to meet travelers’ needs of connectivity can affect repeat business, one survey found that nearly 60% of travelers aged 35–54 would consider a different hotel option if they had poor cell phone reception during their previous stay.


This actually falls into the 'reverse quality' category in the Kano model of expected quality vs. exciting quality. What is exciting quality for older generations of hotel guests (such as having free internet and computer access) has not only become expected quality for younger hotel guests, but also the poor fulfillment of hotel room TV and internet may even be reverse quality — that is, their existence dissatisfies!

Any hotel that’s serious about catering to business travelers must understand these needs, as well as other needs such as internet security, in a modern and changing context, rather than continuing to refresh old features.

Ken Mazur

Related Read...

• "General Motors and Gemba Maestro: How to translate VOC into true customer needs"

•  "Defining Luxury for Today's Business Travelers"

• "Translating Voice of Customer into True Customer Needs"

Microsoft Office^® is a registered mark of Microsoft, Open Office^® Apache Software; FaceTime^® Apple Inc.; Skype^® Skype.

  

Delivering crystal-clear brand identity from end-to-end

"Drunk With Power," an October 14, 2012 New York Times article by Daniel Duane, describes an on-line wine seller named Jon Rimmerman Jon, who earned  his retail cred while at Starbucks. Jon summarizes it as this:

 “the beauty of retail marketing … can be roughly translated as defining a crystal-clear brand identity and then ensuring that everything from the product to customer relations reinforces it."

I like his words, and would like to give them a QFD flavor.

The purpose of modern Blitz QFD^® is to define and prioritize with crystal clarity, that which is most important to the customer, and then ensure that everything from the product to customer relations reinforces it.

Let me explain.

"Crystal clarity" of what matters most to customers. In QFD, this means having a customer need that truly states the value proposition to the customer. Typically, this is the benefit a customer receives from having a problem solved, an opportunity enabled, or image enhanced. It should be independent of the product, its features, and its technology. A Voice of Customer (VOC) statement such as "fits in my pocket" is not a customer need, but rather a fuzzy set of dimensions.

With the Customer Voice table, a Blitz QFD^® tool, you can translate that into true customer needs such as "I can carry with me easily," "Easy to store in my pocket," "Easy to retrieve from my pocket," "Stays in my pocket when I move around," "Does not damage my pocket,"  etc. This helps us understand these true benefits and avoid later design mistakes resulting in "the product falling on floor when I lean over," "the product tearing my pocket off," "the product is too hard to remove from my pocket when I want to get it out quickly," etc.

Crystal clarity means the need statement must be at a sufficient level of detail to be actionable in design, which is typically a tertiary level on a customer needs hierarchy. Abstract expressions such as "convenient" should be deployed to more detail.

Crystal clarity also means that we have accurate priority values. The QFD community replaced the 1960s' ordinal scale weights with AHP-derived ratio scale weights in the mid-1980s, first in Japan and then later in the US. Unfortunately, most English language QFD books and articles were written before this and missed the update. Even today, new QFD texts still cite these early works, and continue the math errors resulting from using ordinal weights in both customer needs and matrix relationships, as well as misuse of matrices including using a House of Quality matrix (HOQ) when it is not needed.

This is why the QFD Institute Green Belt^® and Black Belt^® courses are strongly recommended for professionals in product/service/business development, marketing, design, sigma/lean/DMAIC black belts and so forth. You will learn how to use the modern AHP approach and we provide updated Excel templates. Without AHP clarity, your limited resources risk missing what is truly important and deploying lower priority things.

"Ensuring that everything from product to customer relations reinforces it" is the QFD call for end-to-end quality assurance. Depending on your industry, product, and company, this will vary, but typically describes, end-to-end, the full development, commercialization, and retirement of the product, service, or software. In other words, we must assure that any weakness related to the most important customer needs are made robust. For example, if poor packaging compromises the sterility of a medical supply item, it becomes scrap (let's hope!), wastes money, ruins reputations, could result in injury or death, etc., no matter how well the function and performance of the item was designed.

In classical QFD, each of the design, develop, test, procure, produce, assemble, package, ship, store, sell, support, and other commercialization dimensions has its own matrix. Since the matrix only compares two dimensions at at time, anywhere from four to thirty matrices have been identified in the literature. Maybe in the 1960s-80s, we had enough time and people to analyze these, but that is difficult these days.

In Blitz QFD^®, all these matrices have been replaced for the most part by a single Maximum Value table. One tool goes end-to-end through all the dimensions. How do we do it – with crystal clarity focus on what matters most to customers. This is where we apply our best efforts, first. Makes sense, doesn't it? The Maximum Value table is one of the key tools taught in the QFD Green Belt^® Course and QFD Black Belt^® Course.

Additional training dates will be published at QFD Training & Events Calendar as they become confirmed. Or you can e-mail to us.

Benchmarking – the fatal flaw in modern quality thinking

Frequently we hear in quality conference presentations and papers high praises for benchmarking and "shamelessly stealing" the ideas of others. But does it make sense to take what is successful elsewhere and expect it to work in a different context with different staff and customers? Two recent news reports are noteworthy.

"How Apple Store Seduces You With the Tilt of Its Laptops" (from Forbes Magazine, June 14, 2012): Apple Retail has found that tilting demonstration laptop computer screens at a specific angle encourages customers to adjust them to their ideal viewing angle – and by virtue of touching the computer, invite them to experience the product and its apps in a multi-sensory mode.

"A Store Without a Checkout Counter? JCPenney Presses on with Retail Revolution" (Time Magazine, July 20, 2012): In late July 2012, J.C. Penney (a large American department store chain) announced that by 2014, it will eliminate cash registers and checkout counters at their retail stores. This idea emulates Apple Computer's successful retail store format, also the brainchild of Ron Johnson who left Apple Retail this spring to become CEO of J.C. Penney (JCP). Key functions of the plan are to have store employees with remote scanners roam the store and record purchases and payments, as well as create an iPhone app that allows customers to check themselves out.

Readers who have shopped at an Apple Retail store know that you are surrounded by staff both eager to leave you alone to play with the devices, but instantly there should you have questions or wish to make a purchase. If you use a credit card, you can be immediately checked out right where you stand, and instantly receive your receipt by email. But can a clothing and general merchandise retailer imitate this successfully?

From a QFD perspective, let's examine JCP's decision to emulate Apple as a new solution to an existing problem or opportunity. At the start of a technology-driven QFD project (Apple may have been customer-driven, but benchmarking is usually technology- or solution-driven), we look at the the functions of the technology and what important customer problems does it address?

For example:

• Who are the target customers and how do they shop?
• Do they come in with a purchase already in mind or do they browse?
• Do they buy things from multiple departments and don't mind paying for different purchases in different departments?
• Do they pay with cash?
• Do they add additional items as they walk towards the checkout counter?
• How big a problem is checking out and purchasing at JCP today?
• Do customers abandon their purchases due to waiting in line?
• What other problems do customers face at JCP such as poor selection or size availability?
• How will floor staff handle lost sales when customers that cannot find what they want?

So, when benchmarking another business, be careful to understand the "spirit" and not just the "form."  We talked about this in the QFDI Newsletter "Hoshin Kanri - Understanding the spirit behind the form"

What fits others may need alterations before it fits your business.

When executive solutions become design constraints #2 – The case of Sweden's 17th century warship Vasa

In my last blog, I related the case of the boss who did not listen, and actively discouraged the advice of the very specialists he hired. An historical, but famous example of this recently came to my attention.

In a recent onboard flight magazine, I came across an article recommending things to do in Stockholm. Among the list was the Vasa Museum. I remember visiting it on one of my earliest QFD trips to this beautiful Scandinavian country. It was impressive to see the fully intact 135 foot wooden warship from the 17th century despite it being lost under water for over 300 years.

From my QFD perspective, the ship’s history offered interesting insight to the management style problem discussed in “The unreasonable boss - when executive solutions become design constraints.”  

Vasa, fully intact 17th century Swedish warship
(photo - wikipedia)

Vasa was commissioned by King Gustavus Adolphus (1594–1632) to flag the nation’s largest and most powerful naval force at the time. But immediately after leaving the dock on its maiden voyage in 1628, the ship sank in the Baltic Sea.

Why? Too many design changes as after-thoughts, lack of specifications and documentation detailing the ongoing design changes and modifications, unclear division of responsibility, unrealistic schedule demand, the project mission that got blurred by those changes, and stunted communication between the customer (king), producer (shipwright and builder), and operator (naval officers in charge of testing and navigation).




In particular, the changes that the king ordered after the timbers had been cut to size and the ship’s keel had been laid exacerbated the ship’s instability and ballast deficiency. Other late changes also shifted the project mission unwittingly.

For example, adding the second gun deck (after learning Denmark was building such a design) not only increased the weight burden (too many cannons) but also changed the main objectives of naval war tactics (from crippling the enemy ship with firing volleys from one deck and taking over onboard to capsizing the enemy ship by broadside firing from two decks).

decorated stern model of Vasa
(photo - wikipedia / Peter Isotalo)

In those days it was customary for warships to have ornate decorations that glorified the king. Again, many more sculptures were added on Vasa than its original design. Each measuring 10 feet long, you can imagine how heavy 500 sculptures were to the 135 foot ship.

None of the workers and subordinates had the courage to reveal these structural problems to the king, who had issued a threat against anyone causing schedule delay.

As we discussed in our previous post, Modern Blitz QFD^® tools can help analyze and offer solutions to these scenarios.

Readers, can you follow the process described in that post and do your own analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the king’s orders for the Vasa project?  Please share your analysis and questions with us in the comments.

The unreasonable boss - when executive solutions become design constraints

An acquaintance of mine recently complained that her new boss just didn't listen. She was recently hired by a large sports wear chain to manage their social media and promotional events in advance of their entering new markets and attracting new customer segments.

The owner, it seemed, was so attached to his ideas of how to promote because of his past successes that he could not comprehend that the new customers he wished to attract needed to be approached differently. His most recent demand was that because his children liked popcorn, he told the marketing team to rent an old-fashion popcorn cart for the product booth at a street fair in 100°F weather.

What bothered my acquaintance most, however, was that her direct boss and other managers were afraid to challenge the owner's positions. Whatever he demanded, he got.

QFD has some solutions to such a scenario. Whether it is the boss or the customer, proposed solutions need to be translated back into functional requirements, and then into solution-independent needs, so that better solutions can be examined to achieve those needs.

In the sports wear store example, the popcorn is a solution to what problem or need? Can we analyze for the owner the advantages and disadvantages of popcorn.

For example:

Popcorn's aroma attracts attention. Functional requirement: Attract attention. Need: Our booth stands out in a crowded event. What other ways can we stand out on a hot day? How about misting fans? Handing out folding fans?

Popcorn is something kids love to eat. Functional requirement: Distract kids. Need: Keep kids entertained while mom looks at our sports wear. How else can we entertain kids on a hot day? How about water guns?

Popcorn from an old-fashioned cart shows we are traditional and have been here a long time, and will continue to be here a long time in the future. Functional requirements: Show we are your neighbors and a trusted part of your community. Need: We are a trusted place to shop. How else can we build trust in this new market segment? How about our brands, satisfaction guarantees, our current customers who are respected in the community?

Food sales require a city license, trained operators, food handling protocols. This is a constraint that makes it expensive and time consuming. Our focus is to sell sports wear, and the popcorn could be a distraction.

Popcorn oil can damage our sample products. Kids and adults eating the popcorn and then touching the products will leave fingerprints and stains that will make our samples unattractive and discourage potential shoppers. This is another negative.

If you have attended a QFD Green Belt^® course, you remember that this solution-to-need translation is the job of the Customer Voice table and that the analysis of solution constraints is the job of the Maximum Value table.

Both are new tools  in Modern Blitz QFD^®. These are core tools in the QFD Green Belt^® Course offered in St. Augustine on October 21-November 1, 2012.

How to lose a customer

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Blink Blink QFD

In his May 1 2012 New York Times article "BlackBerry 10 Prototype Is Given to Developers," Ian Austen quotes Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner, [who] "said he was particularly impressed with BlackBerry 10s camera software. It captures extra frames when a photo is taken, allowing users to go backward or forward to a certain moment in time to find a better picture. “

This shows people how they can use devices, how it’s not just speeds and mega pixels, and it’s more like, ‘How do I get the right shot when I’m standing in Disneyland and one of the kids blinks? ”

This is what QFD is all about. Even if the customer talks about speed and mega pixels, their real need is to get a good shot of the kids at Disneyland with their eyes open.

Once we get engineers to understand what outcome the customer demands, then they can focus their technical skills on delivering that outcome.

Even as I write this blog, I am thinking, "Wow, take 3 shots at the same time and pick the best one. But wait, what if one kid is blinking in one shot and another kid in the other shot. Can't the camera "photshop" the three frames and combine them into one with all eyes open? " Let's give 3 cheers to RIM.