A Practical Statistical Approach to Set Specifications in Car Safety Engineering

Safety specifications can be expressed by Market Requirements which describe a performance that any car has to surpass. Alternatively there are the Engineering Specifications which describe average performance for engineering and laboratory testing.

A statistical procedure used for translation of the Market Requirements to the Engineering Specifications is described. It is a combination of engineering judgement and frequency distribution graphs, with confidence limits included.

The procedure has been successfully used in design work on Volvo cars. Potential improvement areas of the method are listed. The method should be applicable to many products with narrow tolerances between Market Requirements and average product performance,