Design for customer satisfaction: an information modelling approach

The role of market information is critical to the success or failure of new product introduction. The challenge of bringing market information to design engineers throughout the design process is addressed, using an information modelling approach. This allows valuable quality function deployment (QFD) information to be captured alongside other product design information, within an object-oriented database. An environment that facilitates the collection, modification and evaluation of information for QFD analysis is provided. This integrated software environment allows valuable market information to be shared between multi-discipline project team members. Use of the decision support system is demonstrated through a case study.