Evaluating Test Methods in Dealing with Customer Perceived Failures in Highly Innovative Product Development

Recent studies have shown that in highly innovative product development processes (PDPs) there is a shift of attention from technical reliability failures to customer perceived failures. Testing the product (design) during the PDP is one of the ways in which quality and reliability information could be obtained early to prevent these failures. In this paper, test methods found in literature are judged on two criteria to identify which test methods are suitable to deal with the customer perceived failures. A field study in a multinational consumer electronics company is performed to verify the findings from the literature review. The results show there is a lack of suitable test methods between concept testing at the front-end of the PDP and product validation at the back-end of the PDP. Conclusions are drawn for further research