A Study of Customers' and the Automotive Industry's Attitude Regarding Visual Quality Appearance of Split-Lines

Other conference contribution, 2004

The exterior design of an assembled car body consists of a number of components, which are in spatial relation to each other. These relationships have a significant impact on the overall perceived Visual Quality Appearance, (VQA) of a car body exteriorly. The automotive industry has the ambition to produce products with high VQA. For companies, which are producing products composed of several components, it is costly and time consuming to consider and control the impact of geometric variation. This paper investigates the industry’s and the customers’ attitude regarding VQA of split lines, by use of an emperical study. It also investigates if there is a correrlation between the car brand that customers think possesses the best VQA regarding split lines and measurement data of the geometrical variation of split lines of those car brands.