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2000
Conference Paper
Title
Strategic Product Family Development by Extending the House of Quality
Abstract
Frequently, the market demands products provided with equal or similar functionality, that should be available for different customer groups. This market behaviour appears e.g. in the image processing field, where scanners, editing equipment, etc. are sold both to professional and amateur users. Because the product functions don't differ much from each other, or they are even the same, it is suitable to apply the same operating principles with variably, scaled specifications. However, the planning of such a product family occurs insufficient systematically in many companies and the products belonging to a determinate family grow without any co-ordination between themselves. The lack of delimitation of each single product and the non-using of synergy effects through model range design lead into loss of competition capability and market share. Initiated by this problem, a QFD-assisted instrument for defining a structured product family was developed. The benefit from using this instrument consists of an integrating view of all products belonging to a family on the one hand, and a strict customer orientation on the other hand. Moreover, this procedure offers the possibility of systematically defining and developing a complete product family corresponding to a company's objective, e.g. cost reduction, technology leadership or adaptation to a niche market. The instrument derives from the QFD-Quality plan and the House of Quality. Outstanding feature is the extension of the House of Quality by several specification classes as well as subsystems. It is possible, by the introduction of specification classes instead of the simple, classic target value, to analyse the specifications of different products within a family at a glance and define them in a coordinated, interactive way. The extension by subsystems offers beyond the possibility of defining the specifications corresponding to the company's objective. The developed instrument was proved on an exposer for the printing preliminary stage at a German company as an example.