Product Planning

Question 1

The tasks in the planning phase of a generic product development process?

Answer 1

• Marketing
  Articulate market opportunity
  Define market segments
• • Design
    Consider product platform and architecture
    Assess new technologies
• • Manufacturing
    Identify production constraints
    Set supply chain strategy
• Other
  Research, finance, management

Question 2

Why do companies need to continually develop new products?

Answer 2

Because of the product lifecycle.

1. Introduction
2. Growth
3. Maturity
4. Decline

Therefor instead create overlapping PD projects to not reach decline phase

Question 3

What are some of the specific challenges for product planning?

Answer 3

1. Customer and market understanding

Henry ford: If I had asked people what they wanted, they would´ve answered “faster horses” (e.g not cars)

2. Uncertainty & decision making

Difficult to make predictions about the future

3. Resources

Question 4

Explain “product plan”

Answer 4

The product plan identifies the portfolio of products to be developed by an organization and the timing of their introduction to the market. The input to product planning is a set of identified opportunities. For each product development project to be carried out a mission statement is authored.

Question 5

What three key aspects must be understood in the planning process?

Answer 5

1. Market strategy
   Customer and market trends
   Segmentation
2. Technology development
   Technology trajectories
   Product platform planning
   Fundamental new product opportunities
   Balancing the portfolio
3. Competitive strategy
   Technology leadership
   Cost leadership
   Customer focus
   Imitative

Question 6

What kind of four product development projects is there?

Answer 6

Fundamentally new products - Products that are based on radically different technology and may address new and for the company unfamiliar market. (For example tesla, new concept)

New platform projects - The project aims to develop a common platform from which many derivatives or variants can be developed while mainly sharing some common subsystems or technologies. (For example, ipad, mac etc, they all work with same iOS operating system)

Derivatives of an existing platform - The development of single product variants/derivatives from a platform, for example by developing different performance versions of a certain subsystem. (Samsung galaxy s series, there are a bunch of different s8,s10 up to s23).

Incremental improvements of an existing product - For example by addressing a quality issue or improving energy efficiency. (New mobile phone with bug fixes and better camera etc)

Question 7

What plans are developed in product planning?

Answer 7

Product plan
Market segment plan
Technology roadmap
Product process change matrix
Resource plan
Mission statement
Customer needs list
Requirement specification
Product development project plan

Question 8

What is included in a mission statement?

Answer 8

A brief description of the product
A benefit proposition
Key business goals
Target markets
Assumption and constraints
Stakeholders