Optimising Customer Satisfaction By Integrating the Customer’S Voice Into Product Development

A new solution approach for integrating customer feedback into product development was developed at the Department of IT in Mechanical Engineering (ITM), Ruhr-University Bochum. This approach aims at increasing product development effectiveness and optimising customer satisfaction. For this a methodology was developed, which enables acquiring prospective customer feedback for future (virtual) products and retrospective customer feedback on existing (market launched) products. A webbased feedback assistant was designed, which allows customers to evaluate product concepts based on customer oriented product test models for extracting feedback. The extracted feedback is mapped on technical product structures using an extended QFD approach and advanced methods for measuring customer satisfaction. The core of the integration concept is the extension of PDM functions, processes and metadata models, whereby technical product data, customer requirements and customer satisfaction indices can be linked context sensitively. The feedback integration approach enables an early product validation before the production/market launch and an analysis of dynamic customer requirements across several product generations. A feedback system was prototypically realised based on a PDM system. The research results are illustrated using the example of developing a mobile telephone.