ABSTRACT
Recently customers’ needs have become diversied because of high living standards and expectations coupled with individualism and consumerism. Consequently, suppliers nd it harder to keep their products in the marketplace due to consumer behavior and intense competition. Industries such as the automobile industry, the automobile parts industry, the electrical machinery industry, and so on intensely feel the need to design and make new products for the market in rapid succession. Especially in Japan, these tendencies are becoming remarkably prominent.
