Mechatronic system design

Chapter 4

PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

Dr. Tran Thanh Hung

Department of Automation Technology,
College of Engineering, Can Tho University
Email: tthung@ctu.edu.vn
 Chapter objectives

At the end of this chapter, students can:

• Understand the method for establishing
product specifications
• Can apply the method to establish product
specifications for the team’s project

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Phases of Product Development

3
Mountain bike’s suspension fork

4
5
 Phase challenges

• How could the relatively subjective

customer needs be translated into precise
targets for the remaining development effort?
• How could the team and its senior
management agree on what would constitute
success or failure of the resulting product
design?

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 Phase challenges

• How could the team develop confidence

that its intended product would have a
substantial share of the suspension fork
market?
• How could the team resolve the inevitable
trade-offs among product characteristics
like cost and weight?

 Establishing product specifications 7

 What are specifications?

• Specifications spell out in precise,

measurable detail what the product has
to do.
• Specifications represent a clear agreement
on what the team will attempt to achieve in
order to satisfy the identified customer needs.
• Must include regulatory and agency
approval requirements
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 What are specifications?

• Other names for ‘product specifications’:

– Product requirements
– Engineering characteristics

• A ‘specification’ = a metric + a value

Example:

“Average time to assemble less than 75 seconds”

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 Establish specifications

For simple products: 1 stage

For technology-intensive products: 2
stages
• Target specifications (representing hopes and aspirations):
- are set immediately after the team has
identified the customer needs it aims to meet.
• Refined (final) specifications (i.e., the specs the team
aims to achieve):

- are documented in the project´s “contract 10

book”.
 The Product Specs Process
• Set Target Specifications
– Based on customer needs and benchmarks
– Develop metrics for each need
– Set ideal and acceptable values
• Refine Specifications
– Based on selected concept and feasibility
testing
– Technical modeling
– Trade-offs are critical
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 Target specifications

To establish target specs:

1. Prepare list of metrics, using the needs/
metrics matrix.
2. Collect benchmarking information.
3. Set ideal and marginally acceptable
target values for each metric.

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 Prepare list of metrics
Start with the Customer Needs

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 Prepare list of metrics

• Look each need and to consider what

precise, measurable characteristic of the
product will reflect the degree to which
the product satisfies that need

• In the ideal case, there is one and only

one metric for each need. In practice, this
is frequently not possible.
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Prepare list of metrics

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 Prepare list of metrics

Guidelines for constructing the list of metrics:

• Metrics should be complete.

• Metrics should be dependent variables.
• Metrics should be practical.
• Some needs cannot be easily translated
into quantifiable metrics (subjective needs).
• Metrics should include popular criteria used
for ‘marketplace’ comparisons. 16
 Prepare list of metrics
Needs-metrics matrix

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Prepare list of metrics
Establish Metrics and Units

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 Collect benchmarking information
• No product development team can expect
to succeed without ‘benchmarking’ the
project against competing products
• Team must collect information on competing
products
– Warning: Data in competitors’ catalogues
and supporting literature may not be
accurate.
 Values for key metrics should be verified
by independent testing and observation. 19
 Collect benchmarking information
Competitive benchmarking chart

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 Collect benchmarking information
• An alternative competitive benchmarking chart can be
constructed with rows corresponding to the customer
needs and columns corresponding to the competitive
products. (Số lượng * thể hiện mức độ thỏa mãn nhu cầu)

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 Set ideal and marginally
acceptable target values
The team synthesizes the available
information in order to actually set the
target values for the metrics:
• The ideal value is the best result the
team could hope for
• The marginally acceptable value is the
value that would just barely make the
product commercially viable
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 Set ideal and marginally
acceptable target values
Five ways to express the values of the metrics:
• At least X: lower bound on a metric
• At most X: upper bound on a metric
• Between X and Y: both upper and lower bounds
• Exactly X: a particular value of a metric
• A set of discrete values: several discrete
choices.
Decisions are facilitated by the metric-based
competitive benchmarking chart. 23
Set ideal and marginally
acceptable target values

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 Refining the specifications

• The team finalizes the choice of a concept

and prepares for subsequent design
and development, the specifications are
revisited.
• Specifications that originally were only
targets expressed as broad ranges of
values are now refined and made more
precise.
• Finalizing the specifications is difficult:
trade-offs 25
 Refining the specifications

Five-step process:
1. Develop technical models of the product.
2. Develop a cost model of the product.
3. Refine the specifications, making trade-
offs where necessary.
4. Reflect on the results and the process.

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 Refining the specifications

1. Develop technical models of the

product
• A technical model is a tool for predicting
the values of different metrics for a particular
set of design decisions.
– As used here, a ‘model’ may be an
analytical or physical approximation of the
product.
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Refining the specifications

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 Refining the specifications

2. Develop a cost model of the product

• Goal: make sure that the product can be
produced at a reasonable cost.
• The first estimates of manufacturing
costs are completed by drafting a bill of
materials and estimating a purchase
price or fabrication cost for each part.
Note: At this point in the development process the team does not
generally know all of the components that will be in the product but
the team makes an attempt to list the components it expects will be 29
required.
Bill of materials with cost estimated

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 Refining the specifications

3. Refine the specifications, making

trade-offs where necessary
Once the team has constructed technical
performance models where possible and
constructed a preliminary cost model,
these tools can be used to develop final
specifications.
How to decide?
 Use a competitive map / trade-off map 31
Competitive map / trade-off map

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Final Specifications

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 Refining the specifications

4. Reflect on the results and the process

• Should team consider offering multiple

products? (in order to best match the particular
needs of more than one market segment)

• Are any specification missing? Do the

specifications reflect the characteristics that will
34
lead commercial success?
 Refining the specifications

4. Reflect on the results and the process

• Is the product a winner?
– Product concept should allow team to set the
specifications so that the product will meet meet
the customer needs and excel competitively.
– Product concept + specifications should offer
hope of competitive pricing + performance meeting
or exceeding customer needs.
– If not, return to concept generation and selection
phase or abandon project. 35
 Summary
To establish target specs:
1. Prepare list of metrics, using the needs/ metrics
matrix.
2. Collect benchmarking information.
3. Set ideal and marginally acceptable target
values for each metric.
To refining the specifications:
4. Develop technical models of the product.
5. Develop a cost model of the product.
6. Refine the specifications, making trade-offs 36
where necessary.