Dimensional Management in Automotive Vehicle Design & Development for Perceived Quality (PQ) Improvement in Buses

Perceived quality (PQ) is one of the most important factors in engineering signoff as well as customer delight and product improvement (feel, look & touch). The PQ is something related to feel of product in terms of gap, flushness, fitment and appearance as per the costumer perceptions and expectations. Validation of design and engineering quality with respect to perceived quality is required for overall product appearance in the eyes of prospective customers. This is equally applicable in today’s automotive bus industry along with the other customer oriented industry. In this paper we have explored the dimensional management scope in improving the PQ requirements and expectations by utilizing the dimensional variation analysis (DVA) approach. We have tried to explain the fundamentals of vehicle aggregates fitment process and impact of fitment tolerances as used in DVA model to resolve vehicle packaging issues (critical gaps & clearance variation as per expected no. of vehicles to be manufactured in future at initial stage of the vehicle design) and demonstrated the same though live case performed on Tata Motors bus project. It is further suggested to include the DVA approach in the system level DFMEA for the detection against failure modes related to bus body PQ assessment.