1) Understanding customer needs - Through surveys, focus groups and customer panels.
Surveys - Using Critical Incident technique is important to form surveys. You may even have to do a survey to form a proper questionnaire.
Focus Groups - Key challenge is that the focus group experts may get carried away during the discussion and the interviewer has to keep them aligned and 'focused' on the topic of discussion
Customer Panel - This is something new I learnt. Basically you just email the survey questionnaire to representative group or give them phone calls and get their inputs/answers.
KANO MODEL is another interesting model or thinking. The chart or model doesn't help much. It is a chart of quality vs satisfaction. I do not understand the second quadrant - negative/poor quality and high satisfaction. I believe the line should be absent. Even though it is above the expected quality line, it does convey the fact, that quality is great.
QFD: I am beginning to quite like it and would love to apply it on a project. I think its very powerful and provides great insights to product development
1. Start with customer requirements
2. Identify functional requirements
3. List Parts characteristics
4. Design Manufacturing environment
5. Manage production operations
