ECO-Boat MOL Capturing Data from Real Use of the Product

In many industries, such as leisure boat production, product design and process engineering are often based on diffuse criteria and a lack of data about the actual use of the products. If design and process development are not based on facts, there is a great risk of setting the wrong quality criteria and performance requirements. In the leisure boat industry the lack of data from how customers actually use their products results in product design based on experience (looking backwards), subjective judgments and input from certain customers or key persons. This often results in too high or wrong quality standards and consequently over-processing. ECO-boat MOL has studied this situation in the leisure boat industry. The paper describes how this research project has approached the need for more fact-based design through three different sources. The project also (re)defines work processes in design and production that take advantage of the new data and information.