The Activity of Concept Generation
A product concept is an approximate description of the technology, working principles, and form of the product. It is a concise description of how the product will satisfy the customer needs. A concept is usually expressed as a sketch or as a rough three-
dimensional model and is often accompanied by a brief textual description. The degree to which a product satisfies customers and can be successfully commercialized depends to a large measure on the quality of the underlying concept. A good concept is sometimes poorly implemented in subsequent development phases, but a poor concept can rarely be manipulated to achieve commercial success. Fortunately, concept generation is relatively inexpensive and can be done relatively quickly in comparison to the rest of the development process. For example, concept generation had typically consumed less than 5 percent of the budget and 15 percent of the development time in previous nailer development efforts. Beca use the concept generation activity is not costly, there is no excuse for a lack of diligence and care in executing a sound concept generation method .
The concept generation process begins with a set of customer needs and target
specifications and results in a set of product concepts from which the team will make afinal selection. The relation of concept generation to the other concept development activities is shown in Exhibit 7-2. In most cases, an effective development team will generate hundreds of concepts, of which 5 to 20 will merit serious consideration during the concept selection activity.