Knowledge management for product maturity

When a new product is delivered, it seldom meets all customer needs. The mature phase of a product is driven by customer needs. It requires a human-centered development cycle. As a result, the company should be able to listen the voice of its customers. Most industrial companies are driven by engineers and by technology itself. If current technology is to serve all actors of the life cycle of a product, related companies need to change their ways of dealing with maturity. They have to stop being so driven by features and start examining what customers actually do. The concept of customer itself has to be revisited to the point that any person or group who deals with a product (coming from a process) is a customer of those who developed the product. Product maturity and process maturity are usually distinguished. Product maturity is related to end-user satisfaction, i.e., customers. Product maturity deals with user experience. Process maturity is related to designers, developers, maintainers and other actors who have an impact on the making and evolution of the product. Process maturity deals with organizations, communities and teams involved in the production of a product. This paper proposes an integrated approach to product and process maturity that involves the use of active design documents to support the description of what the product is, how it is or should be used, why it is designed the way it is and how much it will cost to customers in terms of performance, safety, comfort and other criteria that may be relevant to the product purpose of use.

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