Assignment #3

March 30 , 2015 Prepared by: Tim Williams / Wa rner Sherman WiSh Customer Needs Report Interviews and Observations 1 WiSh Customer Needs Report | 3/30/2015 WiSh Customer Needs Report Interviews and Observations P u r p o s e o f t h i s D o c u m e n t This document outlines the five step customer needs report generating technique described by Ulrich and Eppinger in Chapter 5 for identifying customer needs. The objective of this research is to further clarif y the customer requirements set forth in the Scope of Work and related documents so that the best solution can be used. NOTE: The nature of this project is such that WiSh does not have visibility or direct contact with end users of the equipment being desi gned. The needs assessment, as such, would have been performed by the customer prior to contracting WiSh to complete the project. This report is instead meant as an example of the work that might have been done by the WiSh client prior to approaching the m for creating the product. S t e p 1 : R a w D a t a f r o m C u s t o m e r s Following the 2014 announcement that APEX would cease producing products, our company has been left with a significant backlog of APEX products. We currently estimate that APEX sales will conti nue to decline significantly and all but cease by FQ4FY2017. This will serve as a net loss of approximately $9M in unsold product. In exploring ways to boost APEX sales through the end of our inventory, we surveyed our industrial customers and found that they were significantly more likely to continue purchasing APEX products if an integration device was available. S t e p 2 : I n t e r p r e t R a w D a t a i n T e r m s o f C u s t o m e r N e e d s Analysis of the survey data indicates that an integration device would significantly boost our likely sales for APEX products over the next several years. A graph of expected sales vs. expected sales with the integration device follows: Customer comments give us the following product needs: 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Sales (in thousdands of units) Historical Sales Projected Sales Boosted Projection 2 WiSh Customer Needs Report | 3/30/2015 C u s t o m e r S t a t e m e n t C u s t o m e r N e e d  I’ve never been happy with APEX, and I’m glad to see it go.  N/A  If the APEX integration option is cheap enough, we would be interested. Right now, we are looking at options for overhauling our lines, but money is tight. If we could keep our existing lines and do the rollout in phases, that would be preferable.  Product has a low price.  As long as it’s easy to install, we might continue with APEX for a while. We don’ t h ave room for new racks , so it’ll have to fit in the existing ones.  Product is easy to install.  Product fits in existing APEX racks.  After this APEX fiasco, we’re looking at going to an open industrial standard using Ethernet for everything. Having to rip out everything i n the plant because some *** ** can’t stay in business sucks.  Product works on an open industrial standard  Product uses Ethernet  Are you going to fix some of the APEX bugs while you’re at it? Stupid thing has never worked r ight.  Product improves APEX communications.  As long as it works right.  Product is reliable.  Does the integration require us to bring in a consultant? Because that’s expensive and ends up costing us several days on the floor.  Product is easy to install.  Product installation has a low price.  Product installation has a low impact on operations.  We’re a high humidity environment, so it either needs to be immune or fit in an existing rack.  Product fits in APEX racks.  Product (as a stand -alone) has high envi ronmental tolerances. S t e p 3 : P r o d u c t N e e d s H i e r a r c h y Using the customer needs in Step 2 we can group statements together into more manageable groups. N e e d Product Price  Product has a low price.  Product installation has a low price. Product Form Factor  Product fits in existing APEX racks.  Product fits in APEX racks. Product Capabilities  Product uses Ethernet  Product uses open industrial standard Product Installation  Product is easy to install.  Product is easy to install.  Product installation has a low impact on operations. Product Quality  Product is reliable. Product Tolerances  Product (as a stand -alone) has high environmental tolerances. S t e p 4 : E s t a b l i s h t h e R e l a t i v e I m p o r t a n c e o f t h e N e e d s Because this is not our first experience with this type of product, we used a combination of : 3 WiSh Customer Needs Report | 3/30/2015 R a n k i n g N e e d 1 Product Price  Product has a low price.  Product installation has a low price. 2 Product Form Factor  Product fits in existing APEX racks.  Product fits in APEX racks. 3 Product Capabilities  Product uses Ethernet  Product uses open industrial standard 4 Product Installation  Product is easy to install.  Product is easy to install.  Product installation has a low impact on operations. 5 Product Quality  Product is reliable. 6 Product Tolerances  Product (as a stand -alone) has high environmental tolerances. S t e p 5 : R e f l e c t o n t h e R e s u l t s a n d t h e P r o c e s s Step five requires us to answer t he following questions:  Have we interacted with all of the important types of customers in our target market? Customers for industrial control products are a diverse set of people with many international components. However, most decision -makers tend to be in the US or Europe and we surveyed as many of those as we could in the time allowed. Because we seek to move quickly on this, we used a more passive method of data collection .  Are we able to see beyond related needs to existing products to capture the latent needs of target customers? We believe so. This is not our first experience with a transitional device and lessons learned from past products were confirmed by our data collection for this project.  Are there areas of inquiry we should pursue to follow -up interviews or su rveys? For this specific product, it would be desirable for our sales force to speak with our largest APEX customers to assess whether or not they are in agreement with the report findings . In general, I believe sales would be well served to look into approaching existing APEX customers with plans to transition their existing equipment to newer equipment.  Which of the customers we spoke to would be good participants in our ongoing development efforts? Because of the cost to our customers when devel opment goes wrong, finding partners is difficult. An advantage occurs if sales finds a willing customer to perform an orderly transition to new hardware while using our integration device .  What do we know now that we didn’t when we started ? Are we surprised by any of the needs? The number of comments about ensuring the transition device fit into existing APEX racks was somewhat unexpected. The general tone of users that only look to extend their APEX installation for a fe w years was also surprising.  Did we involve everyone within our organization who needs to deeply understand customer needs? Yes.  How might we improve the process in future efforts? The biggest shortcoming of this effort was time. Ideally, we should be able to solicit far more than 30 responses from our customers. In the future, tasking sales with an aggressive interview campaign may be preferable to surveys. 4 WiSh Customer Needs Report | 3/30/2015 A PPENDIX A: C USTOMER S URVEY 5 WiSh Customer Needs Report | 3/30/2015 6 WiSh Customer Needs Report | 3/30/2015 A PPENDIX B: S URVEY R ESULTS 7 WiSh Customer Needs Report | 3/30/2015 S u r v e y B a s i c s The survey was sent to 131 customers on January 21, 2015. Of those, we received 30 responses where APEX devices were in use. The results of those surveys are shown below. D e m o g r a p h i c s Job descriptions of respondents: Job Title Respondents Plant Manager 8 Purchasing Manager 6 Operations Director 5 Capacity Planner 5 Project Manager 3 Accounts Coordinator 2 VP of Capacity Planning 1 L i k e l i h o o d o f P h a s e -o u t It was much more likely that respondents would phase out their existing APEX systems in the near term if an integration device is not available. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 1 2 3 4 5 No Integration With Integration 8 WiSh Customer Needs Report | 3/30/2015 L i k e l i h o o d o f P u r c h a s e It was much less likely that customers would purchase new APEX equipment if an integration device was not available. C u s t o m e r C o m m e n t s The following comments were provided:  I’ve never been happy with APEX, and I’m glad to see it go.  If the APEX integration option is cheap enough, we would be interested. Right now, we are looking at options for overhauling our lines, but money is tight. If we could keep our existing lines and do the rollout in phases, that would be preferable.  As long as it’s easy to install, we might continue with APEX for a while. We don’t have room for new racks, though, s o it’ll have to fit in the existing ones.  After this APEX fiasco, we’re looking at going to an open industrial standard using Ethernet for everything. Having to rip out everything in the plant because some ******* can’t stay in business sucks.  Are you goi ng to fix some of the APEX bugs while you’re at it? Stupid thing has never worked right.  As long as it works right.  Does the integration require us to bring in a consultant? Because that’s expensive and ends up costing us several days on the floor.  We’r e a high humidity environment, so it either needs to be immune or fit in an existing rack. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 1 2 3 4 5 No Integration With Integration