Step 8.4

Troubleshoot and correct problems in product.

Primary Findings

Secondary Findings

Primary findings

Barriers

Private sector partners must manage use of the developed product over time. 
Non-experimental study
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Carriers

Failure mode effect analysis (FMEA) techniques help the design team to study the causes and effects of product failures. FMEA specifies the various conditions the product will endure, and tests, how it reacts under those conditions, allowing designers to plan a product that will withstand a broader range.
Experiential. Authors' knowledge.
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Methods

Continually observe and correct problems or errors made by team members to improve the quality of decision making and implementation.
Literature review
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Detect problems early and communicate “fixes”
Survey.
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Failure Knowledge Network (FKN) — captures and inter-relates mechanical product quality knowledge from five areas: (i) the connection between failures and product functions, (ii) the relationship between failures and product components, (iii) the correlation between failures and organizations, (iv) the association between failures and product processes, and (v) the conjunction among different failures. FKN information is represented in a four-dimensional matrix that includes components, functions, processes and organization. Each element in the matrix is a failure scenario and represents the related failures within the corresponding dimensions. Conventional factors of failures are embodied in the FKN representation. They include event, detection, effect, severity, solution weight, cause, monitor, reappearance, operation, efficiency and precaution. The indexes of each factor are provided by subject matter experts and are set in accordance with the correlation between corresponding characteristics and failures
Failure knowledge based decision-making in product quality.
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Product quality-related decision-making using the Failure Knowledge Network (FKN) — The first step of the decision-making process is the identification of related failures and characteristics. The second step is determination of the important characteristics of the clusters. Next, there is a comparison between the characteristics of each target. Finally, the interdependent priorities of the characteristics are determined by analyzing dependencies among the targets and characteristics.
Failure knowledge based decision-making in product quality.
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Secondary findings

Barriers

One drawback to using Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is that it has deficiencies in the expression of the relationship between different failure components. As a result it can not be used as a technique for knowledge formulation. One way to represent and share failure information is to construct a knowledge network of failure scenarios.
Source: Dai (2009). In: Dai,W., Maropoulos, P.G. &Tang, X.Q. (2010)

One of the reasons that product quality failures reoccur is that the knowledge of past failures is not well represented or readily-available to respective parties. One way to represent and share past failures is to construct a knowledge network of failure scenarios.
Source: Hatamura (2003). In: Dai,W., Maropoulos, P.G. &Tang, X.Q. (2010)

Measures

NPD performance can be measured in various ways: 1) Development lead time and cost (Roemer et al, 2000); 2) Quality level in terms of number of open issues remaining (e.g., bugs in software) at time of launch (Yassine et al, 2003); 3) The number of features implemented or supported (Karlsson & Ahlstrom, 1999); 4) The amount of discrepancy between a desired goal and the actual NPD outcome (O'Donnell & Duffy, 2002).
Source: O'Donnell & Duffy (2002). In: Yassine, A.A., Sreenivas, R.S., & Zhu, J. (2008)

Tips

Use the Internet to assist with customer and product support. Train salespeople and provide them answers to product questions online.
Source: The Baan Company: Case Study (2002), FileNew Corp: Case Study (2002), Tompkins Group: Case Study (2002). In: Ozer, M. (2003)