Understanding Customer Requirements

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Understanding Customer Requirements

• Principles of Design

Zahed Siddique Assistant Professor School of
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering University
Of Oklahoma zsiddique_at_ou.edu
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Need to focus

• Moving in the wrong direction at a fast pace is
  still moving in the wrong direction.

Right
Wrong
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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

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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

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QFD Target
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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

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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
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Extensions to House of Quality
Customer Evaluation
Ratio of Improvement
Useful Data
Target
This Product
Weighted Importance
Importance
This Product
Technical Difficulty
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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
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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
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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

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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.
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Types of customer requirements

• Functional requirements describe the products
  desired behavior
• Human factors
• Physical requirements
• Reliability
• Life-cycle concerns
• Resource concerns
• Manufacturing requirements

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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Step 3 Determine Relative Importance of the
Requirements Who vs. What

• Need to evaluate the importance of each of the
  customers requirements.
• Generate weighing factor for each requirement by
  rank ordering or other methods

Hows vs
Hows
Customer
Evaluation
Who
Hows
Now
This Product
Whats
vs
Who vs.
Whats
Whats vs
What
Now
Hows
Units
Hows vs
This Product
How
Muches
How
Muches
Targets
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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 Rank100/Sum

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Step 4 Identify and Evaluate the Competition
How satisfied is the customer now?

• The goal is to determine how the customer
  perceives the competitions 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
Whats
vs
Who vs.
Whats
Whats vs
What
Now
Hows
Units
Hows vs
This Product
How
Muches
How
Muches
Targets
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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
Whats
vs
Who vs.
Whats
Whats vs
What
Now
Hows
Units
Hows vs
This Product
How
Muches
How
Muches
Targets
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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
Whats
vs
Who vs.
Whats
Whats vs
What
Now
Hows
Units
Hows vs
This Product
How
Muches
How
Muches
Targets
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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
Whats
vs
Who vs.
Whats
Whats vs
What
Now
Hows
Units
Hows vs
This Product
How
Muches
How
Muches
Targets
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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
Whats
vs
Who vs.
Whats
Whats vs
What
Now
Hows
Units
Hows vs
This Product
How
Muches
How
Muches
Targets
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Components of House of Quality
Hows vs
Hows
Customer
Evaluation
Hows
Who
Now
This Product
vs
Whats vs
Whats
Who vs.
Whats
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
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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

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Requirement List
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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.
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Example House of Quality

• Design a device to toast breads and other similar
  types of food