The Airplane Criteria Process is a customer-in, structured process which includes the discovery, translation, integration and deployment of a comprehensive set of prioritized criteria used to guide the development of airplane designs. It is a continuous, iterative process which provides direction for configuration development not only for a new airplane, but provides the basis for product improvements on existing airplanes. It follows a criteria-driven philosophy of ensuring that product criteria are determined ahead of airplane functionality and part definitions. It also utilizes a tops-down approach for criteria definition starting from airplane level and tiering downward to system and component level detail.
Some of the key benefits of this structured process are reduced cost for expected changes downstream by capturing variations in airplane criteria far in advance of the define process, providing traceability of the original customer need(s) throughout the airplane's development by the creation of a single source of airplane criteria, prioritization of design work made possible by utilizing the importance rating/value assessment of all criteria in ranking the criteria into a list of mandatory and prioritized design criteria and improved customer satisfaction by capturing and utilizing their importance rating, validating the criteria and communicating the transformation of their criteria into airplane definition.
The information presented illustrates the process in more detail and highlights the key activity that produces the process benefits.