Customer Orientation in Advanced Vehicle Design

The attention to the perceived quality, e.g. the quality as it is evaluated by the final customer, is becoming more and more important for the car makers. The paper will describe how such aspects of handling and steering system feel may become manageable by an engineering process, through some fundamental steps: definition of measurable performance for the subjective aspects; identification of the target values for such aspects coherent with product positioning; deployment of such overall values generally fixed at vehicle level into functional requirements for the different subsystems and design specifications (sub targets level quantities). This new approach at car advanced design represents an evolution of the traditional one based on some general criteria and experienced designers; it has the aims of reducing time to market and guaranteeing a “customer oriented handwriting” in handling behaviour and steering feel.