Stories from the Factory Floor #04

The customer called three times.

Same complaint.

“The product is good, but it is difficult to use.”

Quality checked the product.

It passed every test.

Production checked the process.

Everything was within standard.

Engineering checked the drawings.

No problem there either.

So the team visited the customer.

They watched how the product was actually being used.

Within ten minutes, they saw it.

The operator had to turn the product around three times before he could install it.

Every customer was doing the same thing.

The product had been designed to be manufactured easily.

Nobody had asked whether it was easy to use.

The team made a small design change.

The installation became much simpler.

The customer stopped complaining.

The factory learned something bigger than a design lesson.

A product has more than one customer.

The person who buys it matters.

The person who makes it matters.

But the person who uses it matters just as much.

Don’t design only for the factory.

Design for the person who has to live with the product.