Lean product development: Maximizing the customer perceived value through design change (redesign)

With the incremental product development, one of the main objectives is to make it more attractive and valuable for the customer, which leads to increased sales and higher profit. When existing product design is modified to improve its perceived value, each change needs resource commitment. It is important to identify and pursue only those changes, which give maximum improvement in the perceived value. In this paper a mathematical model is presented for perceived value and step-by-step methodology is provided to capture the optimized design changes with cost implications. With the help of a case study on automotive vehicle development, we show how proposed model and method can be used for highest value added change selection. Application of optimization model for perceived value and change trade-off in general is presented along with some special policy cases for different scenarios.