Ideas generated for new products often do not yield successful products. One of the main reasons for this is that the voice of the customer (VOC), used as the main input for generating and screening new product ideas, frequently reflects customers’ wants and needs incorrectly. In this case the new product, if developed, will fail on the market. On the other hand, while the new product may offer features and functionality that do not fully satisfy the target customers’ needs and wants, they may be appreciated by other group(s) of customers. In a typical NPD process the idea for such a potentially successful product does not pass screening and, so, will never be implemented. This problem may be solved by supplementing the VOC with the TRIZ-derived “voice of the product “(VOP), which reflects a product’s objective needs and wants. This makes it possible to discover the new product’s latent capabilities and identify the right customers for the product.
The most important tool to reduce the risk of generating a wrong idea for the new product is the voice of the product (VOP), which reflects a product’s “needs and wants” and supplements the VOC.
To identify the VOP, TRIZ developers have proposed an algorithm for Main parameter of value (MPV) analysis, which involves Function Analysis of the product being improved and of the target customer, and the Trends of Engineering Systems Evolution (TESE) analysis, including S-curve analysis for the product’s important parameters of value.
In practical applications of modern TRIZ, this tool has been successfully used for:
• Converting business challenges into a set of underlying technical problems.
• Identifying the target customer’s latent needs that the Analysis new product can satisfy.
