Maximum – 200 Words
It is a human tendency to add additional elements rather than reduce existing
ones when trying to improve a system
Production Management:
Introduction:
Additive solutions are fundamentally easier than subtractive ones. If removing
something, you run into a problem if you don’t completely understand why it was there in
the first place. You could potentially be messing something up that you do not anticipate.
If you have many elements, finding a subtractive solution requires understanding how all
of them interact with each other. On the other hand, an additive solution only requires
you to understand your new element and how it affects the system as a whole.
When it comes to enhancing items, ideas, or circumstances, individuals have a
habit of looking for additive changes and overlooking subtractive transformations. The
human mind’s concept of improvement is to add new features. As a result, we observe a
regular updating or upgrading of items with new features. Any product that sticks to the
same features will fail to compete in the market. It is a significant difficulty for an
organization’s research and development department to develop new features and an
upgraded version of an existing product. If an improved product lacks any extra features,
it will not be a successful product since customers will not buy it.
Hypothesis:
Customers are drawn to upgraded products that have more features than their current
models.
Variables:
In this scenario, we’re looking to observe what kind of changes they make to the existing
product. So the independent variable is the hints given to the participants, and the
dependent variable observed is the response of the participants in modifying the gadget.
Experiment:
Select twenty participants and give each participant a smartwatch of the same model. Ask
them to write down suggestions to improve/ change the product. Observe the suggestions
made by the participants. In the second step, they are asked to improve the product, but
they are supplied with one additional hint regarding the advantageous subtractive
changes.
Give them the option to remove some features or to add new ones.
Findings (Hypothetical)
The participants may suggest increasing the number of features. This experiment would suggest
that most people understand adding new features as improving the product. People default to
considering what they can add and not what they might remove. Participants may not consider
subtractive options, probably because they did not think about it. But when hints are given about
subtractive options, they might further explore those possibilities and use them to improve the
product.
Limitations:
The research only looks at one product. People’s reactions may differ if other items are provided.
Everyone may not be equally interested in a product or have the same level of understanding. As
a result, the modifications recommended by participants may vary depending on their degree of
understanding. There could be other elements mediating the results which are not directly
observed in this experiment.
