Perceived Quality is the quality attributed to a product based on its perceptual experience. This incorporates the experience a customer has with a product and how it makes them feel about the product. Bringing together the shape, appearance, texture, and physical feel of the product as well as the emotional experience of using the product, Perceived Quality directly affects the customer’s opinion of the value of the product. This perceived value then drives the business.
The combination of these two tools into a Perceived Quality solution delivers a realistic and global view of variation. This allows the user to see how variation will affect different areas, gaps, and flushes of different components, and see them in varying scenarios, to finally determine what is acceptable. This can reduce the need for prototyping, avoiding both the expense and the long wait times for prototype fabrication. In addition, it empowers design teams to review the designs quickly and make changes that can be seen on the product almost instantly.
The variation seen on the product comes from manufacturing processes and tolerances. This means that the variation seen in the design phase is the variation that, if the design is not modified, will be present on the final product. As part of this process, analysis produces the root cause of the variation, allowing engineers to identify the source of the problems and iteratively introduce design changes and updates to manufacturing processes to control variation at critical to quality feature locations.
The Perceived Quality studies come from two sources; the design team’s chosen objectives and the engineering team’s analyses of the design. These two studies interrelate as means of communicating quality objectives between the teams and developing a process from determining acceptable levels of variation for both design and engineering.
As a first step, the process defines what is acceptable from a design standpoint. This is passed down the line to the engineering teams who analyze the product and determine what specifications need to be met. These analyses predict the outcomes of building the product, and determine if the conditions specified by design can be met. If, pending analysis, the design objectives are unachievable, the process can be looped back to review the specifications or the process to determine when adjustments can be made.
Perceived Quality Studies are means of communicating quality objectives and attainable quality levels between Design and Engineering teams. This process incorporates iterative studies to determine acceptable aesthetic levels and then confirms manufacturing’s ability to meet those objectives.
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