Combining The Scenario Technique With QFD And TRIZ To A Product
Innovation Methodology
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Combining The Scenario Technique With QFD And
TRIZ To A Product Innovation Methodology
Elke Baessler, Thomas Breuer, Markus Grawatsch,
Fraunhofer Institute of Production Technology IPT, Aachen, Germany
Abstract
The Scenario Technique, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and TRIZ are some
of the most popular methodologies for product planning and are used in many
companies for the product planning process nowadays. Thereby most of the
companies use these methodologies isolated from each other yet. Scenario
Technique is engaged in forecasting the development of markets or branches. QFD
is used in translating the customers needs to the engineers language. TRIZ helps
analysing and solving inventive problems.
Each of these methodologies has its place in the product development process.
But using them isolated keeps gaps between the different methods. Accordingly
lacking input information are replaced with assumptions, which are not founded
on any systematic derivation.
At Fraunhofer IPT a concept has been developed, that combines scenario
technique with quality function deployment and TRIZ. Using this concept the
three methodologies dovetail to an enhanced approach. Output information of the
scenario analysis are used as input for QFD and the application of TRIZ is based
on the results of the QFD.
The paper describes the theoretical proceeding how to combine the three
methodologies in the product innovation process and demonstrates the practical
suitability by a case study.
1. Introduction
The predominate assumption in research and industry is to generate a vast
amount of ideas in order to result in one successful innovation. However it is
agreed about the positive correlation between the grade of innovation and the
profit margin. According to results of current studies the numerousness of
created ideas does not essentially lead to successful innovations (1, 6). Even
though one rarely complains about the lack of ideas, slim company structures
result in restricted developmental resources, which allow only very few ideas to
be launched into the market. Therefore, based on uncertain or missing
information wrong decisions are made in very early stages, leading to high
capital investment concerning personnel and material in later stages for
erroneous ideas (4).
In the future one needs the competence to select the superior ideas at once
right from the beginning to be able to enhance the efficiency of the product
innovation management (4).
2. Process of Innovation - The W-Model
Due to these reflections, the Fraunhofer IPT developed a process of
innovation - the so called W-Model (4). It integrates seven procedure-stages:
Defining Objectives, Analysing Future, Generating Ideas, Valuing Ideas,
Detailing Ideas, Valuing Concepts and Transfer, cf. figure 1.
Figure 1: Process of Innovation - The W-Model (4)
Within the Defining Objectives stage strategic guidelines and innovation
targets have to either be defined or deduced by superior company strategies. The
following Analysing Future aims for the companies innovation potentials and the
formulation of innovation tasks. Subsequently stage three Generating Ideas leads
from the identified innovation potentials to concrete product ideas. Valuing
Ideas aspires the identification of promising product ideas. Besides the
evaluation concerning market and technology aspects the strategic conformity and
the value for the company has to be reviewed. Within Detailing Ideas further
market and technology information for selected product ideas are acquired in
order to develop product concepts. The following Valuing Concepts includes the
quantitative evaluation in form of a cost-benefit analysis of the in stage five
developed product concepts. The last stage of the W-Model is the Transfer of the
created product concepts into a company’s activity program for the long-term
future - The so called InnovationRoadMap (4).
The different stages of the W-Model are divided into sub-procedures. In
practice methods and aids are assigned to these sub-procedures, supporting their
performance, i.e. the systematic development of the required information.
The systematic and especially complete application of the presented
innovation process requires the conjunction of methods used in single
sub-procedures. A possible conjunction of methods will be shown in the following
connecting scenario technique, QFD and TRIZ.
3. Scenario Technique, QFD, TRIZ
In principle a variety of methods and tools can be used to fulfil the
different tasks of the procedure’s stages (4).
Obviously the scenario technique, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and TRIZ are
extremely suitable tools particularly within the early stages of the product
innovation process.
Here by especially stage two and three, Analysing Future and Generating Ideas
offer themselves for the application of these techniques. The Analysing Future
determines after the analysis of general trends and trends of selected fields of
activity their effect on the company in form of future projections. Fields of
activity are domains with high potentials for permanent competitive advantage.
Based upon these future projections and the company’s core competencies,
innovation potentials, which have to correspond with future development of the
market- and/or technology will be derived. The Analysing Future therefore
results in company-based innovation potentials and innovation tasks. Stage two,
Generating Ideas, produces a considerable variety of ideas for problems and
solutions against the background of derived innovation potentials which are able
to withstand future requirements. Problem ideas are characterised by the need or
demand for a not yet described solution of an existing problem, respectively a
problem that will occur in the future. Whereas solution ideas describe principle
technical solutions, which show additional potential for future fields of
application. Product ideas arise through the combination of a problem idea with
at least one solution idea (4).
The Scenario Technique is a powerful method for Analysing Future. Building on
the two main principles, systems- and future-open thinking, a scenario can be
defined as a generally intelligible description of a possible situation in the
future, based on a complex network of influence factors (5, 7). It regards
enterprises as embedded in a complex network of influences and takes different
sights of the future into account. The scenario is created starting from the
current company’s situation, within the Scenario-Field Analysis major influence
factors are defined as so-called key factors. The following step the
Scenario-Prognostic suggests possible changes of these factors in the future.
The Scenario-Transfer summarises different projections of the key factors in
their extreme specifications to different scenarios (7, 8).
Whereas QFD is a well known and structured technique for product development
or improvement, it can be used in both stages in Analysing Future as well as in
Generating Ideas. QFD emphasises active customer participation and mainly
translates and assesses customer requirements into technical specifications and
demands (2).
TRIZ as a classical and powerful method to generate extraordinary solutions
for any kind of inventive problem (4, 9, 10, 11) can clearly be used within
stage three (Generating Ideas) of the W-Model (3).
Nevertheless leaves the individual and unconnected use of these effective
methods gaps in between. Accordingly lacking input information are replaced with
assumptions, which are not founded on any systematic derivation.
4. Combination of Scenario Technique, QFD and TRIZ
Companies rarely launch totally new business segments, in general a new
product has a current counterpart including a QFD analysis. The current QFD
contains today’s customer requirements as well as their relative importance to
each other and translates them into technical requirements. The relative
weighting of the technical requirements together with the correlation matrix
indicate the most important technical requirements and therefore define the
resulting product design. Problems occur to obtain future customer requirements
for a follower product. How future customer requirements will vary is a major
uncertainty. Wrong assumptions easily lead to unsuccessful products in future
markets.
Using the scenario technique allows the deduction of changes within the
future QFD. Referring to the existing product a decision field is defined. The
global environment is assembled by Spheres of Influence which cover aspects of
politics, economy, society and technology.
Changes inside different spheres may have varying impact on key factors which
again precede to modifications of customer requirements leading to various
importance within the QFD. Variances regarding modified relevance or even loss
or new occurrence of customer requirements sum up to changes in weighting of
technical requirements.
For future products the alternation of technical requirements may lead to
different most important technical requirements. This very often causes also an
emphasis shift of the technical conflicts leading to a different main conflict
than in the current product. New main conflicts hence induce changed
requirements for the product design.
Main conflicts can be solved with suggested TRIZ solutions such as the four
principles for eliminating physical contradictions or the forty innovation
principles to solve technical contradictions (10).
The introduced product innovation method is very powerful since it prevents
the occurrence of uncertainties as can be detected by individual use of Scenario
Techniques, QFD and TRIZ.
Figure 2: Integrated concept for the use of Scenario
Technique, QFD and TRIZ
5. Case study
The newly introduced product innovation method has been exemplary applied to
develop a trend setting vacuum cleaner. Figure 3 shows the House of Quality for
the current product illustrating the current customer and technical requirements
and their importance weighting.
Figure 3: House of Quality - vacuum cleaner, presently on the market.
Starting from this point the influencing spheres for the vacuum cleaner
within the global environment are determined. They can be differentiated in
specific and general spheres. The specific spheres of influence according to the
vacuum cleaner are for example the hygienic behaviour and the living situation.
Economy and environment are examples of general spheres of influence. As
described above the major influence factors are defined as key factors. Some key
factors are summarised in figure 4.
Figure 4: Spheres of influence and derived key factors
Each key factor may vary in different directions in the future. Therefore,
the projection of their extremes leads to two major characteristic (cf. figure
5). Time for household activities e.g. might either increase or decrease.
Whereas the room size per person might also vary between expansion or reduction.
Figure 5: Foresight
Referring to the projection of the different key factors the projections are
summarised to scenarios. According to the investigated key factors the two
different scenarios “high tech” and “health, nature” have been developed. Both
of them are shown in figure 6. Assuming that the time for household activities
might decrease while the room size per person increases, the relevance of the
customer requirement “fast cleaning” will amplify significantly (cf. Figure 5).
This aspect is assigned to the scenario high tech.
Figure 6: Setting high-tech, careless and setting nature, health.
As illustrated in figure 7, the QFD has been adjusted, based on the different
scenarios. Compared to the current QFD the relative importance of the customer
requirement “small size” e.g. increased within setting high-tech from three to
five, whereas a decline to one can be recognised within setting nature. The
change of the QFD for the setting high-tech leads to a new main conflict between
size and filter bag volume. Due to the changes for the setting health the main
conflict transforms to surface of nozzle and power.
Figure 7: House of Quality for both future settings
In both cases the product design has to be realigned due to the changed main
conflicts. The occurring conflicts can be solved using the TRIZ methodology, cf.
figure 8.
The solution for the setting high-tech was solved using the principles for
eliminating physical contradiction, whereas the solution for the setting health
was found using the inventive principles for technical contradictions.
Figure 8: technical solutions
5. Conclusion
It has been shown how three methods used within the product development
process have been combined, leaving no uncertainties or assumption in between.
Goal of the Fraunhofer IPT is the further specification of this approach and the
integration of further methods in the product innovation process as introduced
by the W-model. Within the lately launched BMBF funded research project
“strategic product and process planning” sets of methods are especially
developed for small and medium-sized enterprises. To guarantee a further
distribution of the TRIZ methodology it is essential to co-operate with other
existing or newly developed methods of the innovation process.
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