Proposition of an integrated framework for reducing communication barriers between research & development and marketing departments

Abstract

Collaboration within a company between the Research and Development (R&D) and marketing departments impact the success of the multifunctional New Product Development (NPD) process. In this multifunctional process, several activities have been carried out by these two professional teams who have different knowledge experiences, languages, and cultures. For decades, several scientific research have been conducted to facilitate the coordination between the R&D-marketing teams to eliminate barriers in their relationships. Conventionally, the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method has been employed as an effective tool to drive the design and production process to satisfy customer needs. However, some empirical studies have tried to use various design methods in order to increase the effectiveness of decision-making in NPD regarding different requirements and alternative options. To solve this problem, scientists have proposed integrating the QFD and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approaches. Accordingly, the introduced QFD and AHP strategy has translated the Customer Requirements (CRs) to Technical Requirements (TRs) and ranked them to choose a proper candidate solution. Although by using QFD-AHP extension approach qualitative data will be translated to quantitative one, there are a few remaining issues. Through this methodology, analysis procedure is accomplished subjectively as the experience of the designers and engineering teams and only based on current customers’ demands. In addition, as human judgment could be imprecise, success in understanding potential customers needs will not be guaranteed. Therefore, this thesis attempts to put forward an integrated approach to develop the process of information transfer between R&D and marketing personals in an efficient manner. In order to better to reuse past experiences we develop a theoretical sequential hybrid system model through combining QFD-AHP and Case-based Reasoning (CBR) methodology. Thus, Voice of Customer (VOC) will be analyzed, and communication barriers will be also investigated from a knowledge management perspective. Hence, to accurately predict failed design ideas and eliminate problematic solutions, CBR will be employed in the early stage of product planning design through this integrated framework. This will be done by extracting previous experiences using a case base approach and providing the closest suggested solutions efficiently. In this regard, a case study was executed to assess the effectiveness of the proposed integrated framework system. The product example is bicycle locks for selecting suitable design ideas regarding user needs. The result will lead to a product's design that should satisfy most of the CRs. Indeed, utilizing CBR methodology enables QFDAHP sub-systems to evaluate decisions by receiving feedbacks on the performance of selected solutions. Overall, the proposed integrated framework intends to reduce communication barriers between research & development and marketing departments.

Date	25 Nov 2022
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Mickaël Gardoni (Supervisor)