On Defining Product Requirements: A Case Study in the UK Health Care Sector

Abstract

Abstract Design is one of the core business processes involved in product development, and approaches such as Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Axiomatic Design (AD) have been developed for improving its effectiveness and efficiency. However, they are limited in their provision of structure and formalism to the mapping of customer needs to product requirements. This is in part due to lack of identifying characteristics of customer needs. The characteristics of Solution Space™, consisting of pairs of opportunities and constraints, address partially this by providing a framework for identifying sources of product requirements. This paper reports the results of a case study, within the UK health care sector, related to the design of an artificial knee joint. In particular, it is shown how AD and the framework consisting of pairs of opportunities and constraints can be used in conjunction with each other to establish a view of the system of which the artificial knee joint forms part. The development of such a view helps to ensure that characteristics of potential stakeholders’ needs are more appropriately identified. This is a prerequisite for the establishment of more formal relationships between stakeholders’ needs and product requirements.

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