ABSTRACT
Benchmarking and breakthrough are two methods that are generally used during the very early stages of a product development program. This chapter considers both these methods, with more emphasis on benchmarking, and illustrates how targets are set for the development of future products. The benchmarking exercise typically starts with identifying the toughest competitors and their products that serve similar customer needs to the manufacturer’s proposed product. The data from the benchmarking studies can also be entered into computers as a relational database and later sorted for use by different functional areas as subsets. Photo-benchmarking is a simple but powerful tool to visualize differences and similarities between products. In the planning process, the benchmarking data are used along with the basic needs of the customers, company needs, and government requirements that the target product must meet. A multifunctional team within the product development community is usually selected to perform the product benchmarking activities.
