Industrial application of the method "early determination of product properties"

Nothing is more critical for the success of a project than a design flaw that remains undetected until the product is in production or even handed over to the customer. In order to prevent the negative effects of undetected flaws, the method "early determination of product properties"has been developed at the Chair of Design at the Technische Universität München. In this paper the introduction of the method in a mid-size industrial company and the first resulting tool, the Parameter Checklist, are described. The presented research started with a detailed analysis of the product development process in the industrial company. In order to introduce a complex method in an industrial company, many aspects of the situation of the designers, from existing tools and procedures to the designers' capabilities have to be considered. Because of this, the method was divided into distinct ideas, stages and tools, and compared individually to the situation given. On this basis a first methodical tool was developed, intended to support designers while using the method. The tool called Parameter Checklist supports designers in planning analyses (e.g. tests with physical prototypes, finite element analyses) and in interpreting the results of these analyses. Furthermore, by using the tool, a database is filled that provides enough information to reconstruct the described analyses. In contrast with conventional testing instructions, the Parameter Checklist contains an explicit description of the model, in some respects found to be important, and a list of the influencing parameters. This is the basis for both a simple but conscious form of analysis planning and a more thorough interpretation of the analysis results.