Understanding Customer Requirements

With companies being requested to be registered to either the ISO 9001 2000 standard or ISO/TS 16949 2002 for automotive businesses, customer satisfaction measurement has become an important issue. In years past this was an issue that was not realty very important and was very infrequently measured. In tody s global maiket the measurement of customer satisfaction is very important in order to realty understand customer requirements and the business itself... 

Small series as well as test fleets help to better understand customer requirements and their application. 

The main goal of customer competencies is to know and understand customer requirements in depth. Procurement has to know and understand customer requirements and recognize consumer trends, because of the effect that they have on consumer behavior. The manager often has to overcome several different organizational and cultural barriers in order to come to know customer requirements. 

Throughout the facility, knowledgeable employees are a necessity. There must be a level of understanding of RoHS compliance, what is needed to produce a lead-free order and what questions should be answered to understand customer requirements. 

You must make it clear to your customers that any copies or redistribution of the MSDS or other form of notification must include the section 313 notice. Inotherwords, yourcustomers should understand their requirement to include the section 313 notification if they give your MSDS to their customers. 

All markets are protected to some extent. Domestic suppliers have, at times, the natural protection of lower transportation costs, a greater understanding of the local marketplace through its experience and knowledge of social customs and culture, and an easier ability to respond to domestic customer requirements. Added to this, tariff duties may have to be paid on imports. 

There are a number of things to consider, but the most important is understanding the needs of the customer. Is the total sugar content of the product required or the lactose content The level of uncertainty in the result that is acceptable also helps focus on the choice of method. Once the method is chosen and validated, it is then important to ensure that all of the equipment is available and in a proper state of calibration. Then, all that remains is to have sufficient trained staff to carry out the analysis. Once the experimental results have been obtained and the data treatment is complete, the report can be written. The report also has to meet the customer requirements and should be written in an unambiguous way which is clear to the non-specialist. 

As an analyst you understand the meaning of the scientific data you produce. However, it must be remembered that laymen often do not and so the data need to be documented in a form that is easily understood. For example, the chromatographic analysis of hydrocarbon oil from an oil spill can produce a chromatogram with over 300 components. Explaining the significance of such data to a jury will be of little benefit. However, overlaying it with a standard trace can demonstrate pictorially whether there is a similarity or not. The customer requires information from the analyst to prove a point. If the data are not fully documented, then the point cannot be proven. A customer who has confidence in a laboratory will always return. 

The third P in the program is product and describes MED s commitment to developing trend-setting, innovative technologies that drive growth. This approach requires that the company intimately understands customers workflow, e.g. their clinical and operational processes, their process interfaces as well as the interfaces between MED s equipment, IT, and services, and the interaction of all these components. 

Then we look at the way the components of these systems interact with each other. Once we understand these behaviors, we follow our integrated system approach in terms of looking at the project management system as processes, trying to satisfy customer requirements and also representing risks. 

Several challenges and requirements present themselves when establishing a formal QMS. A primary requirement is a skilled team that understands the needs of the organization, regulatory, and customer requirements. It should have the skill, experience, and expertise to design a robust system and identify processes that support the enterprise. A mismatch of team skills with enterprise needs may result in a nonviable system that is not supported by leadership and staff, leading to failure and disuse over time. 

The CD-ROM consists of manuals and procedures that should be useful to all companies. As the ISO 9000 series of quality standards becomes more widely adopted by organizations, both in the United States and elsewhere in the world, it is essential for compliant companies to create quality systems manuals and applicable standard operating procedures (SOPs) for their employees. These SOPs enable both new and experienced staff to understand the requirements of the ISO 9000 series of standards, along with the principles and practices of the company, and comply with these regulations to build the elements of quality into their products and services with a particular reference to customer satisfaction. 

The purpose of the User Requirements Specification (URS) is to collate the customer requirements for how the LIMS application is to operate in both the laboratory and company environment. There may of course be areas in the URS that are wishes rather than essentials and also some requirements that are GxP critical. Following review, the first version of the URS may be used for obtaining quotations and proposals from the proposed LIMS Supplier/Integrators, and as a result this initial version will act as the foundation stone for the project. Time spent in ensuring that the URS is complete, structured, and clearly understandable will deliver large savings of time and effort (and therefore costs) at later stages of the project, and will also reduce the risk of project failure. 

As with QFD, transfer functions are an essential pillar of the DFSS methodology. In fact once QFD has defined what is required, then the transfer functions are a mathematical model of how the process can deliver customer CTQs. If we understand how process settings affect product features and how features affect performance, then it is feasible to design a product that will meet customer requirements, with yields matching model predictions. If we do not understand these relationships, then the probability of success diminishes rapidly. 

The competitive assessment is a pair of graphs (areas 6 and 7) which depict item for item how competitive products compare with current company products. This is completed for both the customer requirements (WHATs) and the design requirements (HOWs). The customer competitive assessment is important to understand the customer s perception of the product relative to the competition, whereas the technical competitive assessment is undertaken by the company s product development experts to gain an internal view. 

In the majority of industries and sectors, customer satisfaction is a powerful factor in the success of products and services. In the era of mass production, customers were willing to constrain their choices to whatever was available, as long as the price was right. However, customers today are liberated and better informed. This leads them to be choosy about their purchases and less willing to compromise with what is on the shelf. Meeting customer requirements requires fuU understanding of customers values and preferences. In addition, it is important that customers know what the company can offer as well as their possible options and the consequences of their choices, such as cost and schedule imphcations. 

Customer satisfaction is achieved through an understanding of requirements and expectations. Organizations should ask themselves the following questions when defining their strategic master plan ... 

Communications with customers is the most important approach for understanding their requirements. This can be initiated by the customer as well as by the supplier. The customer-initiated feedback can be through formal product requests, product returns, field application data, and audits. The supplier-initiated feedback may include product-performance reviews, market trends, technology integration, competitive analysis, and design-characterization models. 

In order to understand the true process capability for the critical processes, it is important to compute process capability indices using proper statistical procedures. These indices estimate the process s ability to meet design and customer requirements. Two of the most common capability indices are Cp and Cpk, where ... 

With the answers to these questions a better understanding of the customer requirements is available and can be acted on by the supplier. 

The dimensions of this integration include understanding the implications of global demographic change on product demands and customer requirements. It also underscores the fact that diverse and inclusive teams often outperform homogeneous teams in terms of productivity and innovation (see Hayles, Chapter 2, this volume). 

One example of how these challenges were met is the thermal conductivity of AIN in production quantities this well illustrates how a thorough understanding of the basic science is essential to the development of a new material to meet customers requirements. 

How do our product attributes match customer requirements How do our competitors product attributes match customer requirements The goal of this question is to understand whether there are differences in the extent to which our offerings and the offerings of the competition match the attributes demanded by our customers. The relevant attributes could include the extent of product customization to buyer requirements, the buyer-delivery flexibility vs. the delivery offered, and buyer preferences for the level of involvement in the supply chain vs. the level currently offered across the industry. 

The demonstration projects and prototype vehicles have supported both the technology and the understanding of the customer requirements. Not to be underestimated is the effect to the pubUc awareness and the consequences to the market preparation for such new technologies. 

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