One of the biggest challenges for the Product Development Engineers is to have a clear understanding of the Quality Principles and Disciplines they should follow while they are engineering.
In general, the current Product Development System guides of the Automakers companies are mostly focused on provide guidance for the Engineers on the following areas: Design Efficiency; Design Rules for Product Robustness; Design Validation; Product Reliability; Testing Procedures.
The introduction of a new/advanced technology system alone does not mean low incidence of customer complaints. The only way to get that is plan/execute Consumer Driven Design with excellence.
Global Vehicles are more sensitive to Quality since they must satisfy diverse cultural customers without compromise reliability. When a new vehicle is being developed to be sold in many markets around the world - Global Product - this problem is even bigger. Different markets mean different customer expectations. Therefore, even more attention during the design phases is required.
The availability of a Structured Process Mapping for Forward Models vehicles will make the Quality portion simpler to be applied.