Technical Paper
Quality and Affordability by Design in Vehicle Realization
2024-04-09
2024-01-2496
Vehicle quality and affordability will always be the most distinguishing summative characteristics in a fully saturated and highly competitive market. Although affordability is a key decisive factor for many buyers in any vehicle market segment, it is the vehicle quality that differentiates between brands in the segment. Considering that the cost of quality is usually in conflict with affordability, the main challenge in any vehicle design and development process becomes the achievement of the multi-objective conflicting goals of maximizing affordability and quality at the same time during the vehicle realization process from inception to production. In this paper, guided by quality characteristics framework and structured participation of the customers during the vehicle realization process, the maximization of quality achievements within the preestablished affordability targets throughout the process will be studied and discussed.