Product development with customer focus: charting and
analysis of processes concerning market information input to
the product development system at Volvo Car Corporation

Abstract: Involving the Voice of the Customer early in the product development process
creates opportunities for high product quality and customer satisfaction. In
the product development work at Volvo Car Corporation (VCC) customer focus
is important and considered throughout the development process. VCC belongs
to the Ford Motor Company family of brands, and has just recently adjusted
their product development system to show more similarities with the rest of
the family. The new system is called the Global Product Development System
(GPDS 2.1).

The Market Intelligence department (MI) at VCC is responsible for
continually collecting and analysing information about customers and
competitors. The department is involved in a number of activities in GPDS
2.1, and they have asked for assistance in specifying contribution and
timing for theses.

To clarify the expectations on MI, five of its main contributions to GPDS
2.1 have been studied and analysed. The first of them is a delivery called
the Voice of the Market, and it describes the potential customers and
competitors for a vehicle that is being developed. The other contributions
are called research Clinics, and that means organized evaluation meetings
with customers that are conducted at specific milestones in GPDS 2.1. The
four Clinics in GPDS 2.1 are called Directional Clinic, Concept Clinic,
Theme and Packaging Clinic, and Marketability Clinic.

These five mentioned product development sub-processes have been charted,
and the result has been presented as instruction templates in order to be
able to help the personnel at MI in their future work. Improvement
suggestions concerning the processes have also been given to increase the
quality of their result.

Areas that can be improved in the Voice of the Market process are: handling
information flow, working with continual improvements, securing the process,
and motivating the personnel. Suggested solutions include working closer to
the internal Client, evaluating the process continually, educating the
personnel regularly, and giving feedback to the people involved in the
process.

The research Clinics should also be evaluated regularly in a more structured
way. Furthermore, routines for ordering a Clinic should be more formally set
and the Client be informed about what input should be provided to MI when
he/she places the order. Finally the audience at the presentations of Clinic
results could increase if MI promoted their work at for example meetings
with the product development project group. If more people attend the
presentations, the importance of the Voice of the Customer could be spread
through every department at VCC.