Research On Customer-oriented Product Functional Design Approach Based On QFD

With the development of economy and society, the competition is becoming more and more fierce. Then, how to meet the needs of customers and develop new product that can attract customer has become a key for an enterprise to win in the competition.On the one hand, customer needs are the source and basis for product development, only accurately grasp the needs of customers can an enterprise win customers and win the market. On the other hand, the products meet customer needs through specific functions, which are the value of existence of products. Whether new products innovation or old products transformation, thinking naturally focusing on functions is a basic principle.Value Engineering (VE) theory takes functional analysis as the core means of improving product design, reducing product cost, but VE failed to analyze the product functions taking customer needs into consideration. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method specializes in transforming customer needs into design requirements, which reflects the guiding ideology of market-oriented product development. However, the traditional use of QFD are directly considering product quality, with no analysis of the functions and consideration of product cost. Therefore, combining VE and QFD, especially functional analysis and QFD can effectively carry out the needs and functional analysis, so as to ensure the success of new product development.Based on the current VE theory's lack of research on functional design method, this paper combines QFD techniques, develops an approach model of functional design in improvement innovation of existing product, and illustrates its specific implementation process further. The model is divided into three phases, the first stage is function system planning, based on customer needs, through analysis of redundant and missing, inadequate or surplus of the existing function systems, to build a new functional system. The second stage is functional principle solving, as for the above-mentioned needs-based function systems, to carry out the conceptualization and systematic design works to achieve functional structure, then, based on each component's contribution to the achievement level of functions, transforms the cost of the parts into functions. The third stage is reverse function evaluation, for the above function systems solution, through the evaluation of the degree that individual function meets the individual customer need, considering functional importance, cost, customer demand importance, make a comprehensive evaluation of the satisfaction degree of the function solution meeting the overall customer needs, to evaluate function solution.In this study, the model is applied to the development of automotive air conditioning product in a car manufacturer, guiding the design of the air conditioning by functional design method, which has got the designer's recognition.