Program Benefits:
Consensus Builder uses the power of a modified Pugh concept selection process to overcome barriers that result in poor decisions or cause development efforts to drag on needlessly. When alternatives exist, team members can become emotionally invested in their pet idea that makes an objective comparison of alternatives difficult. Consequently, results competition between groups and individuals can delay decisions or result in poor choices as personalities dominate. On the other hand, teams that rush to a single solution generally wind up with inferior product concepts. Consensus Builder encourages the generation of alternative concepts and provides a simple rational basis for comparing alternatives and selecting the best alternative based on customer values. This tool minimizes the emotional involvement of the team members for their own ideas and promotes a rapid team consensus that helps the teams move forward briskly with confidence. Frequently, this method reveals common weaknesses across all proposed concepts, promoting the evolution of new concepts that are superior to any of the initial approaches. This tool can be used by individuals to make robust decisions for the simplest elements of product development, or by small to large teams to resolve the most difficult design selection choices. Consensus Builder achieves the following results:

• The enumeration, clarification, and "weighting" of decision values

• Generation of alternative solutions

• A basis for comparing the relative merits of alternatives

• Identifies the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives

• Identifies common weaknesses, encouraging the search for better concepts.

• A simple scoring criteria identifies the strongest concepts

• Sustains the product vision

• Achieves rapid team consensus where decisions and rationale are documented

• Eliminates the need to revisit decisions

Program Description:
Associates will immediately begin using the Consensus Builder to develop and select superior product and process concepts. Every great decision begins with an understanding of customer values. Associates are able to rapidly recognize the customer values and describe them in a consistent manner so that comparison of concepts is never confusing. Associates will learn how to avoid biasing the results by balancing the values. To the customer values, associates add design, production or distribution values important to the decision process. Associates learn to weight the values and rapidly compare the relative performance of each alternative for each defined value. Common concept weaknesses are identified, and used to encourage the search for better ideas. Finally the cumulative value of each concept is determined and compared to select the most robust concept.
 

Implementation and Customization:
These techniques can be applied immediately to associates products and processes. Our flexible approach can be quickly and expertly tailored to reflect your company´s specific products and concerns.