A methodology for extracting dimensional requirements for a product from customer needs

Dimensional requirements greatly influence the performance of a product, yet there is no systematic process for determining them. Often as a result, some dimensional requirements are overlooked at the design stage, which forces costly changes at a latter stage of product realisation (such as manufacture and assembly). A methodology is presented here which will assist extracting the dimensional requirements for a product from the customers' needs. It is suitable for use in a Concurrent Engineering (CE) environment and incorporates some of the existing methodologies used in CE viz. quality function deployment, tree diagrams (The New Seven Tools) and Pugh's concept selection method. It provides a systematic way of determining the dimensional requirements of a product and establishes clear links between customer needs and the dimensional requirements. These links will help the CE team to understand the product requirements and how they are to be satisfied through the dimensional aspects of a design.