Value-based product design – the customer’s voice in product development

The success of new car models is the result of a balance between the value to the customer and price. All too often, the development of cars and their pricing does not begin directly with customer value, but rather with competitors’ cars in the corresponding segment. In this way, OEMs miss the potential to strategically optimise product and equipment features during their development within their price and target cost framework.   Strategy Engineers and Vocatus have developed a multi-stage process that embeds the customer‘s voice into the development process without having to consult the customer about every single new product decision: the value-based product design. This approach develops a “standardised currency” which for the first time allows the customer value to be integrated into the hard KPI system (cost, weight, etc.) of research & development (R&D). With this, R&D receives a measurement system, which enables the making of clearly faster, more transparent and sustainable product decisions.   This article describes in detail this method tested successfully in many previous projects and sketches in concrete terms how “value-based product design” can be integrated into the OEM’s processes.