1 Introduction
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the hot topics and the open issues of the literature about Product Planning, with a particular attention to what concerns the suitability of methods for industrial settings;
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the benefits that are claimed by the developers of Product Planning methods; from this viewpoint, no review has been performed according to authors’ knowledge;
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the factors that enable the diffusion of said methods, with a particular reference to their adoption in University courses;
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the priorities assigned by enterprises; to this regard, the authors are aware that a large number of factors can be subsumed by previous studies conducted within industrial environments. However, the knowledge is extremely dispersed, the ways through which information is extracted is hardly comparable, and therefore, no specific reference can be adopted to extract such priorities, at least for what concerns Product Planning.
2 Research methodology
3 Analysing the literature about Product Planning: treated themes and overlooked issues
3.1 Role and objectives of the Product Planning in the Fuzzy Front End
3.2 A general view on the literature about the initial design stages and specific objectives of this study
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the possibility of effectively individuating business opportunities through tailored design methodologies;
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the most suitable means to limit the fuzziness of initial NPD phases;
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the capability of customers to unveil impacting new product characteristics;
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the identification of success factors concerning the product directly, rather than the management of the NPD process.
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identifying further arguments that have not been sufficiently highlighted by authors’ overview;
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observing the increasing/declining interest of the scientific community towards specific issues by clustering the literature sources according to their publication dates.
3.2.1 Performed analysis: examined body of knowledge and employed software instrument
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Group 1: 12 papers published from 1996 to 2001;
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Group 2: 13 papers published from 2002 to 2007;
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Group 3: 16 papers published from 2008.
3.2.2 Main evidences of the linguistic analysis
3.2.3 Issues to be further investigated and specific objectives of the present research
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the initially posed themes have been sufficiently explored and are not worth investigating further;
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the problems faced by past papers do not impact NPD practices, because of structural modifications of the competition among industries;
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the proposed solutions have not resulted in successful applications and, hence, new attempts are currently experienced.
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whether scientific and industrial arenas acknowledge any established Product Planning practice, irrespective of its arguable suitability for a worldwide competition framework increasingly focused on innovation;
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the claimed advantages deriving from the implementation of Product Planning methods;
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pros and cons of involving customers and product stakeholders during the FFE;
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the effective benefits of diffusing and implementing Product Planning models in industry;
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whether rigorous proposals have been advanced to identify successful new product characteristics regardless the followed NPD process.
3.3 Review of Product Planning methods
3.3.1 An acknowledged classification of Product Planning approaches
3.3.2 Research criteria
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New Value Proposition (Kim and Mauborgne 2005);
3.3.3 Identification of the methods to support Product Planning
Kind of approach | Name (or general topic) of the methodology | Reference source |
---|---|---|
Responsive | DSS for customer satisfaction assessment | Liberatore and Stylianou (1995) |
SW for marketing surveys analysis | Matsatsinis and Siskos (1999) | |
DSS based on experts and customer surveys | Chan and Ip (2011) | |
Marketing survey with persona model | Liao et al. (2008) | |
Kano model (classic) | Kano et al. (1984) | |
Kano model evolution | Nilsson-Witell and Fundin (2005) | |
Proactive | Scenario model | Lee et al. (2010b) |
Blue ocean strategy | Kim and Mauborgne (2005) | |
Lateral thinking | De Bono (2010) | |
Value assessment metric | Borgianni et al. (2013) | |
Hybrid | Brainstorming | Osborne (1953) |
Lead users method | Von Hippel (1986) | |
Selection from new product ideas database | Büyüközkan and Feyzioğlu (2004) | |
Kansei engineering | Nagamachi (1995) | |
System for product conceptualization and customer surveys | Chen and Yan (2008) | |
Customer value model for service design | Kimita et al. (2009) | |
Virtual customer integration | Füller and Matzler (2007) |
4 Effects brought by the research on Product Planning
4.1 Properties of Product Planning methods
4.1.1 Focus on the manifest properties of the tools supporting Product Planning
#
| Property | Description | Relevance of the property |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Initial focus on products attributes | Predominant attention on the identification of the attributes and features of the product to be developed. Subsequently, these attributes can be articulated in order to create an innovative product profile | The analysis of the single features of a new product allows to perform insightful evaluations of customer preferences. It favours the process of developing the requirement list |
2 | Initial focus on general product ideas | Approach aimed at identifying from the beginning new general product ideas, without analysing single attributes | The capability of framing a general product idea from the very beginning of the design process avoids the need to reconcile single and potentially conflicting customer requirements |
3 | Quickness and easiness of the method/tool | It features methods resulting easy, quick and intuitive for the user, who has to learn, implement and use them | It is important to support quickly and easily the Product Planning phase, in order to reduce the companies’ committed resources |
4 | Development of computer applications | It features those methods that have been implemented in a computer-aided tool | Computer applications can effectively support the Product Planning in an easy and quick way; software tools are essential instruments in the present industrial context |
5 | Effective support in the individuation of latent needs | It considers the capability of effectively aiding the search of customer latent needs | The discovery and fulfilment of latent needs supports the development of breakthrough products and allows to avoid head-to-head competition |
6 | Integrated competitors’ analysis | Characteristic possessed by the methods that include an analysis of the competition | The analysis of the reference industry can help to individuate the competition factors and to seek a differentiation strategy |
7 | Consideration of customer preferences dynamics | It features those methods that consider the variations in the time of the customers’ preferences and tastes | Customer preferences vary in time and it is important to consider their dynamics in a right market at a right time |
8 | Reliability of the approach | Level at which the presented contributions have been verified or validated through practical applications in differentiated industrial fields | It is desirable to employ reliable and tested methods that can be beneficially exploited in a large range of industrial contexts |
9 | Support in selecting the most beneficial product idea | It considers the capability of selecting the most beneficial product idea that should be developed by the company | It is fundamental to support the last decision-making phase of the Product Planning, because it evaluates which product idea has the greatest chances to be turned into a potential market success |
10 | Independence from inputs subjectivity | It refers to the limited employment of personal judgments or uncertain inputs, which can alter the final results of the Product Planning | Such feature influences to a considerable extent the robustness and repeatability of the method or tool |
4.1.2 Classification of the collected methods in terms of the emerged properties
Kind of approach | Methodology | Property # (from Table 2) | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | ||
Responsive | DSS for customer satisfaction assessment | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Partially7
| Yes | Partially8
|
SW for marketing surveys analysis | Yes | No | No1
| Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Partially7
| Yes | Partially8
| |
DSS based on experts and customer surveys | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Partially7
| Yes | Partially8
| |
Marketing survey with persona model | Yes | Yes | No1
| Yes | No | No | No | Partially7
| Yes | Partially8
| |
Kano model (classic) | Yes | No | No1
| No | Yes5
| No | No | Partially7
| Yes | Partially8
| |
Kano model evolution | Yes | No | No2
| No | Yes5
| No | Yes | Partially7
| Yes | Partially8
| |
Proactive | Scenario model | Yes | No | Partially3
| No | Yes | No | No | Partially7
| Yes | No |
Blue ocean strategy | Yes | No | Partially3
| No | Yes | Yes | No | Partially7
| No | No | |
Lateral thinking | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No | |
Value assessment metric | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Partially7
| Yes | No | |
Hybrid | Brainstorming | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
Lead users method | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes6
| No | No | No | No | No | |
Selection from new product ideas database | No | Yes | No1
| Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | |
Kansei engineering | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Partially7
| Yes | Partially8
| |
System for product conceptualization and customer surveys | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | Partially7
| Yes | Partially8
| |
Customer value model for service design | Yes | No | No1
| No | Yes | No | No | Partially7
| Yes | Partially8
| |
Virtual customer integration | Yes | Yes | No4
| Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Partially7
| Yes | Partially8
|
4.1.3 General discussion about diffused strengths and weaknesses of Product Planning methods and approaches
4.2 Investigating the diffusion of Product Planning methods
Number of courses | Number of universities | |
---|---|---|
Identified courses | 302 | |
Analysed courses with available syllabus/course descriptions | 294 | |
Courses whose contents are irrelevant in light of the topic of the paper | 103 | |
Courses that highlight the importance of treated topics, but no method or approach to support Product Planning is reported in the syllabus and/or description | 119 | |
Courses that include generic responsive approaches | 47 | 19 |
Courses that include at least one proactive approach | 8 | 8 |
Courses that include at least one hybrid approach | 18 | 13 |
Courses that present Brainstorming | 9 | 7 |
Courses that present scenario-based techniques | 5 | 5 |
Courses that present the Lead user method | 5 | 4 |
Courses that present BOS | 2 | 2 |
Courses that present Lateral thinking | 1 | 1 |
Courses that present Kansei engineering | 1 | 1 |
Universities in which no responsive, proactive or hybrid method is included in the academic programs, even if they offer at least one course that shows the importance of the topics treated in the present paper | – | 4 |
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47 courses, taught in 19 different universities, concern generic responsive approaches based on the so-called Voice of the Customer (VoC);
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18 courses, taught in 13 universities, include one or more hybrid approaches;
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8 courses, taught in 8 universities, show one or more proactive methods.
4.3 Congruence of the benefits claimed by Product Planning methods with respect to industrial needs: an exploratory study on a sample of enterprises
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a detailed (and consequently time-consuming) analysis of a focus group of enterprises can provide more valuable results if compared with quick questionnaires administered to a large sample of industrial subjects, as inferable from the discussion about investigation methods included in (Ulrich and Eppinger 2011);
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companies often highlight their strengths and hide their weaknesses (Bell 2008), therefore the use of questionnaires without interacting with the firms and/or observing how they act can provide unreliable results;
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the relationship of trust with the selected firms, due to frequent partnership with authors’ research teams, is supposed to provide a good understanding about their point of view with respect to Product Planning, as well as the actual strengths and weaknesses of their strategies. The authors have not included in the investigation other industrial partners, because of their lack of autonomy in undertaking decisions concerning the FFE, minor degree of mutual trust, supposed hurdles in sharing the intended concept of Product Planning due to fully unstructured and rather haphazard design processes. The lower reliability of the outcomes provided by other companies, although available to participate in the survey, could potentially lead to misleading conclusions.
Industrial field | Turnover (about) | European classification according to the number of employees (small enterprise: <50 employees; medium enterprise: <250 employees; large enterprise: >250 employees) | Business strategy (B2B = business to business; B2C = business to customer) | |
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Company 1 | Electronic systems | 3 Mio. € | Small enterprise | B2B |
Company 2 | ICT | 3 Mio. € | Medium enterprise | B2B |
Company 3 | Audio systems | 30 Mio. € | Medium enterprise | B2B/B2C |
Company 4 | System providers for food and energy processes | 5000 Mio. € | Large enterprise | B2B |
Company 5 | Glass system technology | 5 Mio. € | Small enterprise | B2B/B2C |
Company 6 | Powered appliances for kitchen, cleaning and outdoor use | 15,000 Mio. € | Large enterprise | B2C |
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industrial sectors: from traditional mechanics to electronic products and ICT;
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the reference market: from mass market products to niches;
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the size of the firms: from few tens of employees (companies 1, 2, 3 and 5 are SMEs) up to branches of multinational corporations (firms 4 and 6);
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the turnover: from few to thousands of Mio. Euros.
4.3.1 Brief description of surveyed companies’ Product Planning approaches
Company | Product Planning strategy | Kind of approach |
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Company 1 | General approach based on the VoC | Responsive |
Company 2 | Virtual interaction | Hybrid |
Company 3 | General approach based on the VoC | Responsive |
Company 4 | Scenario technique | Proactive |
Company 5 | General approach based on the VoC | Responsive |
Company 6 | Scenario technique and selection approach similar to Kansei | Hybrid |
4.3.2 Main results of companies’ survey
Companies’ needs | Firm 1 | Firm 2 | Firm 3 | Firm 4 | Firm 5 | Firm 6 | Sources |
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Quickness and easiness of the method/tool* | • | • | • | • | • | ||
Effective support in the individuation of latent needs* | • | • | • | Yeh et al. (2010) | |||
Competitors’ analysis* | • | • | • | • | • | Chai and Xin (2006) | |
Independence from inputs subjectivity* | • | • | • | • | Evanschitzky et al. (2012) | ||
Consideration of customer preferences dynamics* | • | • | • | • |
Peculiar of Product Planning
| ||
Reliability of the approach* | • | • | • | • | Thia et al. (2005) | ||
Support in selecting the most beneficial product idea* | • | • | • | Reich (2010) | |||
Use of computer applications* | • | • | • | • | Araujo et al. (1996) | ||
Possibility of involving customers in design activities | • | • | • | • | • | Graner (2016) | |
Possibility of entrusting multidisciplinary teams | • | • | • | Cooper (1999) | |||
Possibility of schematizing the identified ideas formally | • | • | • |
Peculiar of Product Planning
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possibility of involving customers in the Product Planning activities: this need is strictly related to the possibility of minimizing the risks related to the development of new products. It can be fulfilled by all the hybrid methods, because, as seen above, they involve customers in idea generation or selection;
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possibility of entrusting the Product Planning phase to multidisciplinary teams: this demand starts with the assumption that multidisciplinary teams can provide more point of views, which supports the successful development of innovative products. Although methods’ developers do not claim this aspect as a peculiar strength, several mapped tools allow to involve multidisciplinary teams. In particular, scenario techniques, lateral thinking, brainstorming, service design methods developed by Chan and Ip (2011) and Chen and Yan (2008) can satisfy this demand fully;
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possibility of schematizing the identified ideas formally: this need is related to the demand of formalizing, saving and sharing generated ideas. Among the collected literature methods, BOS provides a specific tool, namely value curves, that allows to schematize new product ideas in terms of attributes and related performance levels that designers plan to offer.
4.3.3 Further information emerging from surveyed firms
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scholars’ “dogmatic” approach;
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communication problems;
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insufficient promotion of research results (several firms do not know scholars’ works);
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cultural problems;
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distance from the business world and its needs;
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supposed unsuitability of the methods’ outcomes in certain industrial fields.
5 Discussion
5.1 Considerations on the reasons behind the poor adoption of Product Planning methods
5.2 Discussion on the research questions
5.2.1 Whether scientific and industrial arenas acknowledge any established Product Planning practice
5.2.2 The claimed advantages deriving from the implementation of Product Planning methods
5.2.3 Pros and cons of involving customers and product stakeholders during the FFE
5.2.4 The effective benefits of diffusing and implementing Product Planning models in industry
5.2.5 Whether rigorous proposals have been advanced to identify successful new product characteristics regardless the followed NPD process
5.3 Limitations of the performed investigation about Product Planning
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authors could have omitted relevant literature contributions or overlooked some of the methods’ distinguishing features;
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the courses held in the most prestigious technical universities, chosen as a sample of convenience, could be poorly representative of the NPD-related contents taught in universities worldwide;
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the quantity of investigated firms is surely limited and their belonging to a specific geographical area could affect the reliability of the outcomes. In this sense, the investigation in the industrial field suffers from one of the limitations identified by Graner and Mißler-Behr (2012) with respect to studies about NPD methods. The authors have already clarified (Sects. 2 and 4.3) the reasons behind preferring to analyse few companies in-depth rather than obtaining less focused outcomes from a richer group of organizations. However, in order to temper the described biases, just demands emerging from a significant share of companies have been considered for the subsequent analysis and discussion.
6 Conclusions
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Product Planning methods can be characterized with respect to a set of remarkable properties, which appear to range among the most meaningful factors that determine the adoption of these tools;
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the main problems affecting the diffusion of Product Planning methods are supposed to stand in a limited role played by the University world as a catalyst to enlarge the knowledge about their benefits and the low number of applications demonstrating their efficacy in industry;
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industrial subjects tend to implement responsive approaches, despite their argued performances in supporting the generation of disruptive innovations. The reasons behind this emergence require additional research efforts.