Understanding Customer Requirements

1. Understanding Customer Requirements Principles of Design Zahed Siddique Assistant Professor School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering University Of Oklahoma zsiddique@ou.edu

2. Need to focus Moving in the wrong direction at a fast pace is still moving in the wrong direction. Right Wrong

3. Information on QFD…. • Developed in Japan in the mid 1970s • Introduced in USA in the late 1980s • Toyota was able to reduce 60% of cost to bring a new car model to market • Toyota decreased 1/3 of its development time • Used in cross functional teams • Companies feel it increased customer satisfaction

4. Why….? • Product should be designed to reflect customers’ desires and tastes. • House of Quality is a kind of a conceptual map that provides the means for interfunctional planning and communications • To understand what customers mean by quality and how to achieve it from an engineering perspective. • HQ is a tool to focus the product development process

5. QFD Target

6. Important points • Should be employed at the beginning of every project (original or redesign) • Customer requirements should be translated into measurable design targets • It can be applied to the entire problem or any subproblem • First worry about what needs to be designed then how • It takes time to complete

7. Targets Components of House of Quality Hows vs Hows Customer Evaluation Who Hows Now This Product Who vs. Whats Whats Whats vs Hows Now vs What Units Hows vs How Muches This Product How Muches Targets

8. Units Targets Extensions to House of Quality Customer Evaluation Ratio of Improvement Useful Data Target This Product Weighted Importance Importance % This Product Technical Difficulty

9. Step 1: Who are the customers? • To “Listen to the voice of the customer” first need to identify the customer • In most cases there are more than one customer • consumer • regulatory agencies • manufacturing • marketing/Sales Customers drive the development of the product, not the designer

10. Step 2: Determine the customers’ requirements • Need to determine what is to be designed • Consumer • product works as it should • lasts a long time • is easy to maintain • looks attractive • incorporated latest technology • has many features List all the demanded qualities at the same level of abstraction

11. Step 2: cont... • Manufacturing • easy to produce • uses available resources • uses standard components and methods • minimum waste • Marketing/Sales • Meets customer requirements • Easy to package, store, and transport • is suitable for display

12. Kano Model Basic Quality: These requirements are not usually mentioned by customers. These are mentioned only when they are absent from the product. Performance Quality: provides an increase in satisfaction as performance improves Excitement Quality or “wow requirements”: are often unspoken, possibly because we are seldom asked to express our dreams. Creation of some excitement features in a design differentiates the product from competition.

13. Types of customer requirements • Functional requirements describe the product’s desired behavior • Human factors • Physical requirements • Reliability • Life-cycle concerns • Resource concerns • Manufacturing requirements

14. How to determine the Whats? • Customer survey (have to formulate the questions very carefully) • If redesign, observe customers using existing products • Combine both or one of the approaches with designer knowledge/experience to determine “the customers’ voice”

15. Affinity Diagram • Provides structure for verbal data by creating natural clusters or groups • Ensures that the list of demanded qualities are complete and expressed at the same level of detail

16. Constructing Affinity Diagram • Set a brainstorming session to list all possible requirements • Record each element of the list on small cards • Place all cards on a table randomly Silent mode • Spend time reading all demanded qualities • Start at the same time, once everyone is ready - everyone quickly and without thought find two demanded qualities that have something in common • If you find a demanded quality is not where you think it belongs, move it. If it is moved again, make a duplicate and talk about it later. • The process continues until all demanded qualities are in a group.

17. Constructing Affinity Diagram Discussion Mode • Begin discussion after group composition for the demanded qualities becomes stable • First review the demanded qualities that seemed to have more than one home • Select a descriptive name for the groups. Group names must also be demanded qualities, but at a higher level of abstraction • Look at each group and judge if all elements are at the same level of abstraction • Check each group by asking “If this is the name of the group, what elements should be included but are missing?” • Next test for missing groups. • Check with the types of customer requirements list

18. Targets Step 3: Determine Relative Importance of the Requirements: Who vs. What • Need to evaluate the importance of each of the customer’s requirements. • Generate weighing factor for each requirement by rank ordering or other methods Hows vs Hows Customer Evaluation Who Hows Now This Product vs Whats Whats vs Who vs. Whats What Now Hows Units Hows vs This Product How Muches How Muches Targets

19. Rank Ordering • Order the identified customer requirements • Assign “1” to the requirement with the lowest priority and then increase as the requirements have higher priority. • Sum all the numbers • The normalized weight Rank/Sum • The percent weight is: Rank*100/Sum

20. Targets Step 4: Identify and Evaluate the Competition: How satisfied is the customer now? • The goal is to determine how the customer perceives the competition’s ability to meet each of the requirements • it creates an awareness of what already exists • it reveals opportunities to improve on what already exists Hows vs The design: 1. does not meet the requirement at all 2. meets the requirement slightly 3. meets the requirement somewhat 4. meets the requirement mostly 5. fulfills the requirement completely Hows Customer Evaluation Who Hows Now This Product vs Whats Whats vs Who vs. Whats What Now Hows Units Hows vs This Product How Muches How Muches Targets

21. Targets Step 5: Generate Engineering Specifications: How will the customers’ requirements be met? • The goal is to develop a set of engineering specifications from the customers’ requirements. Restatement of the design problem and customer requirements in terms of parameters that can be measured. Hows vs Hows Customer Evaluation Who Each customer requirement should have at least one engineering parameter. Hows Now This Product vs Whats Whats vs Who vs. Whats What Now Hows Units Hows vs This Product How Muches How Muches Targets

22. Targets Step 6: Relate Customers’ requirements to Engineering Specifications: Hows measure Whats? • This is the center portion of the house. Each cell represents how an engineering parameter relates to a customers’ requirements. 9 = Strong Relationship 3 = Medium Relationship 1 = Weak Relationship Blank = No Relationship at all Hows vs Hows Customer Evaluation Who Hows Now This Product vs Whats Whats vs Who vs. Whats What Now Hows Units Hows vs This Product How Muches How Muches Targets

23. Targets Step 7: Identify Relationships Between Engineering Requirements: How are the Hows Dependent on each other? • Engineering specifications maybe dependent on each other. 9 = Strong Relationship 3 = Medium Relationship 1 = Weak Relationship -1 = Weak Negative Relationship -3 = Medium Negative Relationship -9 = Strong Negative Relationship Blank = No Relationship at all Hows vs Hows Customer Evaluation Who Hows Now This Product vs Whats Whats vs Who vs. Whats What Now Hows Units Hows vs This Product How Muches How Muches Targets

24. Targets Step 8: Set Engineering Targets: How much is good enough? • Determine target value for each engineering requirement. • Evaluate competition products to engineering requirements • Look at set customer targets • Use the above two information to set targets Hows vs Hows Customer Evaluation Who Hows Now This Product vs Whats Whats vs Who vs. Whats What Now Hows Units Hows vs This Product How Muches How Muches Targets

25. Customer Evaluation Relationships Among Engineering Characteristics Customer Evaluation Customer Evaluation Identifying performance measure conflicts Engineering Characteristics Record Performance measures for each customer demanded quality Relative Importance Record customer performance ratings for your Similar product and competitors’ products Customer Attributes Importance for each demanded quality needs to be determined Relationship between demanded customer qualities and Engineering Performance The first step is to list all the demanded qualities at the same level of abstraction Technical benchmarking Units Units Technical Difficulty associated with achieving Targets/improvements and importance of technical characteristics Engineering Influence Customer Qualities Objective Measures Setting Technical Targets Determining Important Characteristics Targets Targets Targets Technical Difficulty Technical Difficulty Importance Importance

26. Weighted Importance Targets Rank Components of House of Quality Hows vs Hows Customer Evaluation Hows Who Now This Product vs Whats vs Whats Whats Who vs. What Hows Now Importance % Addition to the House of Quality presented in text book Units Hows vs This Product How Muches How Muches Targets Technical Difficulty Selected

27. Creating the Requirement List • Contents of Requirement List • Specify if the individual items are demands or wishes in the clearest possible terms • Tabulate Quantitative and Qualitative aspects • Collect further information • If possible rank wishes as being of major, medium or minor importance • Living document • Arrange the requirements in clear order • Define the main objective and the main characteristics • Split into identifiable groups • Enter the Requirement list on standard forms and circulate • Examine Objections

28. Requirement List

29. Name 1 Name 2 Name 3 Requirement List Example Use information from House of Quality as an starting point for creating the requirement list. Need to identify requirements for the product that are basic and necessary but are not specified by the customers.

30. Example House of Quality Design a device to toast breads and other similar types of food