Task Clarification

Abstract

The design task is generally presented to the design and development department in one of the following forms: • as a development order (from outside or from the product planning department in the form of a product proposal) • as a definite order • as a request based on, for instance, suggestions and criticism by sales, research, test or assembly staff, or originating in the design department itself. The task description contains not only statements about the product, such as its functionality and performance, but also statements about deadlines and cost tar-gets. The design and development department now faces the problem of identifying the requirements that determine the solution and embodiment and formulating and documenting these quantitatively as far as possible. In order to achieve this, the following questions need to be answered in close cooperation with the client or proposer: • What are the objectives that the intended solution is expected to satisfy? • What properties must it have? • What properties must it not have? The result or this process is a requirements list. This document thus repre-sents the specification against which the success of the design project can be judged. In so far as this has not already been done in product planning (see Section 3.1), the design and development department should undertake the situation analysis described in 3.1.4 in order to specify the product situation and to identify future developments. A useful method used to support the preparation of the requirements list is Quality Function Deployment (QFD) (see Section 10.5). QFD helps to translate customer wishes into product requirements.