Structuring requirements as necessary premise for customer-oriented development of complex products: A generic approach

Purpose: Complex products like for example intra-logistical facilities make high demands on developers and producers and involve high investment and operating costs. When planning and developing and also making buying decisions the facility utilization and the thus ensuing requirements on the facility and its components are inadequately considered to date. Nevertheless, with regard to customer-directed product design, these requirements must all be taken into account – especially as they can contribute to possible savings. In this context, it is necessary to survey and systematically regard requirements from a large number of areas like for example the operator, the facility producer and also requirements of external parties such as the law and to implement into adequate product characteristics to produce customer-oriented products. This is, however, a difficult task because of the diversity of stakeholders involved and their numerous and often divergent requirements. Therefore, it is essential to structure the requirements, so that planners and developers are able to manage the large amount of information. Structure models can be used in this context to cluster requirements. Within the German Collaborative Research Centre 696 a 10-dimensional model has been developed. This model allows structuring of all requirements on intra-logistical facilities or respectively complex products in general. In the context of dealing with