The president of Stanley-Bostitch commissioned a team to develop a new
handheld nailer for the roofing market. The product that eventually resulted from the effort is shown in Exhibit 7-1 . The mission of the team was to consider broadlyal ternative product concepts, assuming only that the tool would employ conventional nails as the basic fastening technology. After identifying a set of customer needs and establishing target product specifications, the team faced the following questions:
• What existing solution concepts, if any, could be successfully adapted for this application?
• What new concepts might satisfy the established needs and specifications?
• What methods can be used to facilitate the concept generation process?