Understanding the Problem and the Development of Engineering Specifications

Understanding the Problem and the Development of Engineering Specifications

1. 1.Understanding of product need.

   • “Understanding the design problem” means to translate customers’ requirements into a technical description of what needs to be designed
   • There are many techniques that are used to generate engineering specifications. One of the best and the most popular currently called Quality Function Deployment (QFD).
     • QFD is organized to develop the main pieces of information necessary to understand the problem:
       • 1. Hearing the voice of the customers
       • 2. Developing the specifications or goals for the product
       • 3. Finding out how the specifications measure the customers’ desires
       • 4. Determining how well the competition meets the goals
       • 5. Developing numerical targets to work toward

2. 2. IDENTIFY THE CUSTOMERS: WHO ARE THEY?

   • For most design situations, there is more than one client; for many products, the most important customers they are consumers.
     • A method to ensure that you have identified to all customers is consider the entire shelf life of the product

3. 3. DETERMINE THE CUSTOMERS ' REQUIREMENTS: WHAT DO THE CUSTOMERS WANT?

   • consumers want a product that works as it should, lasts a long time, is easy to maintain, looks attractive, incorporates the latest technology and have many characteristics.
     • QFD collects information from There are basically three commonly used methods:
       • observations
       • surveys
       • groups of focus.
       • Regardless of the method used, these steps will help the design team develop useful data:
         • 1. Specify the Information Needed
         • 2. Determine the Type of Data-Collection Method to Be Used
         • 5. Order the Questions
         • 6. Take Data
         • 7. Reduce the Data
         • 3. Determine the Content of Individual Questions
         • 4. Design the Questions

4. 4. DETERMINE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF THE REQUIREMENTS: WHO VERSUS WHAT

   • QFD assesses the importance of each of the customer's requirements. This is achieved by generating a weighting factor for each requirement.

5. 5. IDENTIFY: AND EVALUATE THE COMPETITION

   • Determinate how the customer percelves the competition's ability to meet each of the requirements
     • The customer requirement
       • 2. The product meets the requirement slightly
       • 1. The product does not meet the requirement at all
       • 5. The product fulfills the requirement complete
       • 3. The product meets the requirement somewhat
       • 4. The product meets the requirement mostly

6. 6. GENERATE ENGINERING SPECIFICATIONS HOW WILL THE CUSTOMERS REQUIREMENTS BE MET?

   • Customers requeriments
     • can be measured
       • Time to attach
       • # Of parts
       • # Of standars tools used
       • # Steps needed to attach
   • Parameters of interes and targets for parameters

7. 7. RELATE CUSTOMERS REQUIREMENTS TO ENGINERING SPECIFICATIONS: HOW TO MEASURE WHAT

   • How an enginering epecification relates to a customers requirement
     • Strong measures for a customers requirement and others providing no measure at all

8. 8. SET ENGINERING SPECIFICATION TARGET AND IMPORTANCE: HOW MUCH IS GOOD ENOUGH

   • Set the targets and estabilish how important it is too meet each of them
     • Specification importance with the method
       • Step 1: Multiply the importance (0-1-3-9)
       • Step 2: Sum the weighted values for each for each specification
       • Step 3: Normalize these sum across all specification

9. 9. IDENTIFY RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ENGINERING SPECIFICATION: HOW ARE THE HOWS DEPENDENT ON EACH OTHERS?

   • Engineering specifications may be dependent on each other