Improving Product Reliability and Software Quality, 2nd Edition

18Product Concept Phase

Product development begins with the concept phase. It consists of two parts, the product concept and design concept (discussed in Chapter 14). In the concept phase, a decision is made to develop a new product. During the concept phase marketing, engineering, operations, and field inputs yield product concept requirements. It does not matter if the product is a new platform or a derivative product; the process is the same. The concept phase is often conducted in a vacuum between senior engineering and marketing management. The decisions made during this time have a dramatic impact on the entire organization. It is in the concept phase that the product is defined on the basis of market needs, customer focus, product features, product cost, business fit, and product architecture. This may seem like a strange time to begin activities regarding product reliability because there's so little known about the actual product itself − after all, it is only a concept. No detailed design effort has started, so there's no work to be done on improving the design. The main reliability objectives in the concept phase are to form the reliability team, define the reliability process, establish product reliability requirements, and a first‐pass risk assessment to conduct a Pareto study on previous reliability problems. These top reliability problems become design constraints for the design concept phase. A summary list of the reliability activities performed in the product ...