A drill is a drill bit used to drill holes in rock or other structures. In order to drill objects of different materials, drill tools are derived from an extremely wide variety of styles. Managing a wide variety of products and customer needs creates a lot of trouble for drilling tool suppliers. When we deployed a product requirements management solution for drilling tool companies in recent years, we discovered a common pain point in their product management. We organize these points and the corresponding solutions, and share them with the readers, so as to reduce the detours of the peers.
A typical drilling tool company may have dozens to hundreds of products. Although there are many varieties, customers often need to make certain changes in their selected products. And the company may have hundreds or thousands of customers. In this way, a dynamic response relationship similar to the following is generated between the product and the customer and the customer project.
The dotted line in this diagram means "purchasing". For example, Customer A has purchased "Product 1.1" and "Product 1.2.1", which are used on projects A.1 and A.2 respectively. Client B, on the other hand, purchased Product 1.2 in its project B.1. From the manufacturer's point of view, at first they have three stereotyped products, namely "Product 1", "Product 2" and "Product 3", for customers to choose from. This picture means that both customers A and B are interested in "Product 1", but they have made some modifications to derive "Product 1.1" and "Product 1.2" respectively. After that, Customer A made modifications on the basis of "Product 1.2" and derived "Product 1.2.1".
If a derivative product is used repeatedly, the manufacturer can list it as a new stereotype product for potential customers to choose. Therefore, the number of times a product is used and the conditions of use are very important for the future development of the product.
The relationships represented in the diagram should not be conceptually complex, but in practice various problems arise in managing such relationships. Each product is represented by a set of drawings, and their relationship to each other and their relationship to the client's project is prone to confusion. After communicating with customers, we found that these problems can be classified into three categories. Below we will list these problems one by one, and attach solutions to them.
Category 1: Management of drawing versions, customer projects and customer feedback
Management of Drawing Versions - Old and new versions of drawings for each product (including finalized products and derivative products) should be kept in an orderly manner. In the DevSuite knowledge base, the drawings can be classified and managed according to the folder classification. Each drawing is managed as a separate Knowledge Item. We can set responsible persons and access rights for knowledge items. Drawings are bound to knowledge items as attachments.
For each check-in and check-out of drawings, the system will have corresponding records, similar to version control tools. Moreover, the system supports opening drawing attachments of different versions.
Customer Projects and Customer Feedback – Customers and their projects and feedback on the product are critical. Through the powerful page customization capability of the DevSuite system, we can specially add customer feedback pages to facilitate business personnel to retain customer feedback.
View drawing usage distribution. Drawings with high usage rate can be considered for finalized production. By viewing the report on the utilization rate of drawings, you can find out which drawings have a higher utilization rate for the leader to analyze and make decisions.
Category 2: Stereotypes, derivatives, customer feedback, and the relationship between customer projects
Relationship Management between Stereotypes and Derivatives – As shown in the diagram above, a manufacturer can modify a stereotype to create a derivative, which may in turn generate another derivative. In the absence of management tools, this multi-level relationship is often not properly preserved. Derivative product drawings can be associated with finalized product drawings. In addition, in the [Link Knowledge] item on the [All Links] page of the finalized product drawing, you can view all related derivative product drawings.
Links to Products and Client Projects – Links to products and projects let us know how the product is being used and how effective it is. This information can serve as a good reference for potential clients. If the manufacturer can accurately provide such reference information to the customer, it will be able to increase the purchase amount. In the [Link Function Points] item on the [All Links] page of the drawing, you can check which customer projects the drawing is applied to.
Combination of product and customer feedback – After using a product (especially a specially tailored derivative), customers will inevitably have positive or negative opinions about the product. No matter what kind of opinion, it is valuable to the development of the product. So customer feedback must be combined with the product. Through the presentation of the report, it is easy to check the feedback of each project and customers.
The third category: the problem of permission control
图纸权限控制 – 图纸的权限控制可能是各式各样，各个公司都不同。一个可能的情况是，技术主管有权限查看所有的图纸，但是技术人员只能查看某些特定的图纸。通过DevSuite系统精细的权限控制，我们可以指定特定的某个人或某类人具有对特定文件夹的访问控制权限。下图中左半侧是技术主管的查看视图，右半侧是普通技术人员的查看视图。你可以看到普通技术人员对某些图纸是看不到的。
产品定价格的权限控制 - 价格可以有多种，比如内部定价和对外报价。内部定价允许高层人员和财务看，对外报价特别是要给销售人员用的，它随着市场情况不断变动，并且是仅开放给销售和高层领导的。
通过对【财务人员】和【高层人员】设定页面访问权限，DevSuite系统可以限定只有公司财务人员和高层领导才可以看到【财务报价】的页面信息，**角色的人员无法看到该页面。下图中的【对外报价】只显示在上半图，但在下半图，同一页面中【对外报价】却消失了。
高效地管理客户及产品信息是钎具行业发展业务不可避免之路。在我们拜访钎具厂家时有位李总监曾跟我们诉苦说，他们对市场的方向不够敏感，因为他们弄不清哪个产品有最多的客户，应该要定型。更有甚者，由于图纸管理不当和人员更替，他们甚至把一个潜孔钻头的衍生产品图纸重复做了三次。我们请他详细解释。他说：“我们是土法炼钢，只简单地用Excel和Word文档管理信息和他们之间的链接。需要更新这些文档的人很多，有的销售人员可能还故意不更新。信息不正确，自然决策也是错误的。那个潜孔钻头的衍生产品就是因为信息没更新，所以图纸由不同的人重复做了三次，到最后才发现。”
在实施的过程，李总监发现泰克赛尔提供的《钎具行业产品需求管理解决方案》可以相当妥善地解决他们的头痛。几个月以后我们会再回访，相信到时候我们对客户的需求以及我们的解决方案又会有更深入的领会。
文章作者： 王 琪 Patrick Tsai