Competitive Analysis/Product Benchmarking 3

[VivK]

Hi,

I am wondering if there is any engineer out there who has experience in Competitive Analysis/Product Benchmarking. Could anyone give me any guidance or tips on how to perform this job without becoming a "librarian" please? Any websites or resources that would be helpful?

Thank you.

 

[rhodie]

I worked for a building materials manufacturer as a "Benchmarking Engineer" that actually focused more on competitive testing than anything else.

I think the holy grail you are looking for would be the ASTM (

http://www.astm.org/

) website. However, depending on your situation, the CSA or UL may be more appropriate.

As far as the day-to-day stuff, I simply acquired all of my company's product line, all of the competior's offsets, and proceeded to analyize all aspects of the products.

One example: The company I worked for made adhesives.
I would prepare a test according to ASTM#xyzwhatever placing a mesh strip imbedded into the adhesive. The adhesive was applyed to various substrates, (i.e. glass, woods, plastics, metals) and when sufficently dry placed into an extensiometer and pulled to gauge adhesion strength.

I would run a sufficent number of samples, write a report, and turn the results over to the marketing guys and the chemists. By being able to compare our product vs. theirs, the chemists were able to add more methylethyl-death and the marketing guys were able to brag about our 35% better adhesion factor.

Some of the "testing" was subjective, but still meaningful if done properly. The results were always appreciated by almost everyone involved, right down to the people on the plant floor.

The applicable testing variables depend on your products, but be sure to talk to both nerdy engineers/technicals and the ponytail wearing marketing and sales guys. Everyone has some special test result they are looking for.

 

[tomwalz]

You might try talking to actual end users.

We have gone to time and trouble to provide a better feature than our competition did only to find out the end user didn't care.

tom

 

[Carburize]

There is an argument that says that benchmarking is just a continual game of "catch-up" by the time you have analysed the competition they have moved on. Some management "gurus" now advise that such exercises are a waste of time!

 

[okeng]

Don't listen to the management gurus too closely. Most industries don't move that fast. Besides, "catching up" is what you have to do before you can pass.

We have done benchmarking on various construction equipment and have always found it to be worth the money and effort.

The first thing I always do is build a spreadsheet of characteristics and fill in everything that you can learn from the competitive product literature and your own specs. Don't be afraid to have a jillion items that nobody but you cares about. I've found interesting correlations by comparing dimensions and capacities that I didn't think were related. Look for things that don't fit the pattern, like a machine that has tighter turning despite a longer wheelbase. That's where you will find the things that truly differentiate one machine from the rest.

Learn to use the "hide" function in excel to keep from overwhelming everyone else with all the trivia that you collect.

This spreadsheet is often worth having even if you don't follow up by getting the actual hardware and running it. It is a convenient place to put bits of information that don't have a home, and if you maintain it as new machines appear on the market, it will be useful for a lot of people in the organization. This seems to be something that comes very naturally to engineers and is impossible for sales guys to cope with or maintain.

The hardest thing on mobile machinery is to get a handle on the subjective operator stuff. Things like capacities, physical dimensions, speeds, etc. are easy.

The operator feedback that will drive you buggy is the subjective touchy-feely things like "this loader steers better". How does it steer better? Is it faster, easier, less jerky, more responsive, what? Digging through everyone's different terminology is well worth the effort and will sometimes uncover the characteristic that makes the machine "feel right" but doesn't really have a name.

Don't worry about being the "librarian". If you've got the latest competitor's literature and actually know where you keep it, you can often swap it to the marketing guys for invites to toga parties and cool stuff like that.

Jess Davis
davisprecisiondesign.com

 

[VivK]

Thanks for the replies guys. Didn't expect responses so soon

To tell the truth I wasn't too happy about getting this task. I did not want to become a testing engineer and an admin staff who maintain the database, both of whom did the benchmarking before me but had left. Management is keen to continue the benchmarking and also want to make the benchmarking database more useful to the design engineers (ie. not just having a bunch of numbers in the database but also some analysis as well).

After talking to my supervisor and reading your posts, I feel a bit more enthusiastic about taking on this task. The plan is for me to set up the testings, analysis and database so that other people can take up the day-to-day testing and I can get back to design engineering. In the mean time, looks like there could be a fair bit of work to be done for the benchmarking database.

Thanks again for your advices.

 

[tomwalz]

Re: jess davis

He's right about the operator's subjective feedback. They know there are things they like but they don't have the engineering or the vocabulary to describe them. They do the best they can but their description often "doesn't make any sense" according to engineering. Start out by assuming that the guy doing the job knows what he is doing and tell them that.

Case 1
A machine showing erratic behavior. We couldn’t talk to the people on the plant floor unless we had a representative of management and a representative from the union there and all questions had to be cleared by both of them first. Day 2 - on the way to coffee one of the plant floor guys slides up next to me and whispers in my ear “They make us use the gas cylinders until they are empty. When they get low the pressure goes to hell” then he drifted away.

He was right. They had orders to use all the gas in the cylinder before replacing it.

Case 2
Broken carbide after brazing
One of the firs things a brazer told me was “We’re not perfect but we think a lot of breakage is caused by grinding.” Turns out that the grinding was set up for right had tools. When they ground left hand tools the coolant sprayed all over the operator so they just didn’t use coolant. We solved 40% of their “brazing problem” by changing grinding procedures.

Actually this sounds a lot like a dream job to me. You sound like a nice guy who cares so the operators will like you. You will get to study the best that is being done in your field then you get to design even better.

Have fun,
Tom