Product Development Life Cycle Essay

Satisfying customer expectations is objective of all businesses. To realize it, product/service is provided with aim to fulfill customers’ basic requirements. Each product/service possesses quality which defined as the ability of product/service to meet those requirements. Planning and designing processes is required in order to develop certain qualities within the product/service. These processes are emphasized in product development method.

2.2.2.1 Product development

By definition, product development is the creation process of products or services with unique characteristics that offer new or additional added value to customer. Product development involves visual or formulation modification of existing product or creation of new product

Its processes are flexible and the order may differ depends on condition and each step may repeat if needed. The lifecycle is a continuous improvement cycle, it does not stop after product pricing, but it will return again to idea creation in order to develop better product that may increase customer’s satisfaction.

The product development lifecycle needs dedication to create product, market research and analysis and adequate standard specification. The product development life cycle is integral part of decision-making process.

In general, product development project can be divided as four major

When a company intends to create better product than company existing product.

• External-driven. When a company intends to create better product than competitors’ product.

Advantage of this project is having products as reference point to create novel product with more desirable properties. This project involves large cross-functional teams with shared responsibilities.

2.2.2.2 Quality Function Deployment

Once customer requirements have been captured and analyzed, information of customer requirements needs to be translated into functional specifications and design. This activity involves marketing function, product designers and engineers.

Quality Functional Deployment (QFD) is a well-documented technique for translating the “Voice of the Customer” into “Action of the Developers”. QFD is an appropriate approach to identify how customers perceive various functional product capabilities, features, and quality and reduce perception uncertainty. The customer perception data can be used as weighting factors.

Characteristics of QFD which exist in different QFD forms are:

• Focus on customer requirements;

• Combination of customer requirements and measurable technical quality features;

• Involves multi-functional teams with goal of consensus;