Product Performance and Specification

Abstract

A new product development process starts with a requirement statement, that is, a description of the required product functions and their related performance standards. This involves defining the product performance and constraints. Once this is done, we can derive a set of specifications that form the basis for the production of the product. In Chapter 1 we defined desired and predicted performance and in Chapter 2 we indicated that a product is a complex object that can be decomposed into several levels. As a result, we have a hierarchy of performance and specification and these are interlinked. In this chapter we discuss product performance and specification and their links in general and then focus on reliability performance and specification. The outline of the chapter is as follows. We start with a discussion of requirements and constraints in Section 3.2. Sections 3.3 and 3.4 look at performance and specification in general and the links between them are discussed in Section 3.5. In Sections 3.6 to 3.8, we look at product performance and specification in stages I through III of the new product development process model proposed in Chapter 2. In Section 3.9, we integrate the discussion of Sections 3.6–3.8 and describe the overall process for decision making regarding performance and specification in new product development.