Retrospective Analysis and Evaluation of Non-Nominal Visualization as Means for Evaluation of Perceived Quality in the Automotive Industry

Paper i proceeding, 2010

Within the automotive industry, Perceived Quality group different aspects that influence the customer perception of high quality on a product. Accordingly, Perceived Quality is not about functional quality but about aspects that the customer perceive through senses like feeling and appearance of materials, width of split lines, finish of painted components, the sound and feeling of movable and fixed components, absence of build defects etc. All together those aspects and the harmony between them reflect the producer's ability to control product parameters and thereby also mirror the functional quality of the product. Non-nominal visualization has been proposed by several authors as a method to evaluate Perceived Quality. However, focus has mainly been on simulation and visualization capability and tool development. Very few publications have concentrated on industrial experience and evaluation of proposed tools and methods. This paper present a retrospective analysis and evaluation of methods and tools for non-nominal visualization that has been implemented, further developed and continuously used at Volvo Car Corporation (VCC) during the last five years. Implemented methods and tools are based on the work presented by Wickman [1]. The purpose with the study is to evaluate whether proposed methods and tools really worked as intended. The retrospective analysis and evaluation covers the use of non-nominal visualization in eight vehicle projects. Data for the analysis has been collected from VCC by studying different types of information sources. The two main sources have been non-nominal visualization presentations and visualization- and simulation models. Project team minutes and working logs related to non-nominal evaluations have also been used. The retrospective analysis clearly shows that those parts of methodology that has been implemented do work as intended. It is also clear that implemented methodology has increased concurrent engineering in several aspects and also enables the possibility to take decision virtually in the concept phase that previously was taken during physical built phase.