Competitive Advantage through Design Tools and Practices

Selecting and implementing design tools and practices for use in the development of new products is more of a corporate bet than a guaranteed investment . Driven by the external forces of market opportunity, technological progress, and competitive pressure, manufacturing companies typically review available design tools and practices, hoping to choose those that will help produce a sustained competitive advantage . Unfortunately, such choices are often accompanied by confusion, unreasonable expectations, or misdirected effort . This chapter presents a conceptual framework that views design tools and practices in terms of promoting strategic capabilities that can become a source of competitive advantage. We define a competitive product to be one that stands the test of the market. It is, at worst, generally equivalent to competitor products, or at best, better than competitor products in one or more dimensions of interest to the customer. Such dimensions may include the following :