Requirements and Benchmarking One of the things we can do to understand and develop our own requirements is to explore other products that are similar to our proposed product or that solve the same or similar customer problem.  Where there are similar needs met, benchmarking is a way for us to understand how other suppliers have […]

The customer can seldom articulate the technical details of the product.  The customer may define the product or need in terms of function and performance, but building the product from these documents will be extremely difficult or perhaps impossible.  We will need some type of document to begin describing in technical terms the product that […]

In keeping with our requirements work, we will start by identifying the attributes of a good requirement.  We start our project off with the requirements, so it stands to reason if we start off poorly or in the wrong direction, we will not make the objective.  This situation will get worse the longer we spend […]

Continuous Deliver and Embedded Automotive I have worked on projects that employed continuous delivery for embedded products. The embedded product was an automotive component.  The core of the software (the operating system) was specified using conventional approach. This operating system consisted of the maximum model requirements for this globally used component. The component looked and […]

Documentation and Rework Once, a long time ago, I worked at a company that was having some difficulty coordinating their development work.  The product that was produced was a complex arrangement of mechanical and electrical / electronic systems.  The company was ISO certified and had documentation describing how they would work, including configuration and change management.  […]

In the purchasing contract with a tier one supplier, the expected the “0-kilometer” quality or failure rate is not to exceed 500 parts per million (ppm).  These are failures seen before the product leaves the OEM manufacturing floor requiring product rework on the assembly line or as the vehicle rolled off the end of the […]

Qualitative Testing Qualitative tests look for a change in a quality; for example, a color might change. Qualitative tests always involve the use of attributes rather than variables values (e.g., temperature). Consider the Kastle-Meyer test for the presence of blood–an archetype for qualitative forensic testing. The test is impressively quick and functions as a decision […]

Manufacturing Project The project whose scope includes delivery through manufacturing will include some quality assurance steps from the previous blog post to ensure we are able to produce the designed product to the quality expected by the sponsor. Trial Production Run and Problem Discovery The manufacturing team reviews the development of the manufacturing line with […]