Abstract
We have been developing the methodology for planning and designing new products based on voice of the customer (VoC). Increasingly, customers desire products that embody new values and they are not satisfied merely by improvements of existing functions. A systematic technology and support environment are indispensable in order to extract requirements adequately and efficiently from a huge number of VoC and various abstract levels of VoC, and to increase the quality of the understanding of requirements. We have developed LIVEVOICE^<TM>, a powerful requirement extraction tool that provides these functions and operates. Requirement trees generated by it provide project members with powerful support to facilitate understanding of the whole structure of customer requirements (CR) and to analyze requirement extraction processes. The project members can record ideas and concepts for reuse systematically and automatically during the process of requirement extraction. Use of this methodology enabled us to reduce Quality Function Deployment (QFD) errors, and consequently, establish agile and competitive product planning that achieves higher customer satisfaction (CS).
