Customer Needs Analysis (to be done as individual students)
Consider your customers for your device:
Users of the device
Consumers of the device (not always the same people as the “users,” though they may be.)
Manufacturers of the device
Others with a vested interest as you can identify them
Each of these customers has “needs” for the device. These needs are typically stated in high-level terms, as for example “lightweight,” “easy to clean,” “portable,” “efficient,” etc.
Some of these needs are extremely important to the customer, and their satisfaction will be critical to product success; others are “wish list” or “good to have” items that consumers or users might use to decide among competing devices.
Your task in this “customer needs analysis” is to identify the needs of each customer constituency, and to rank them in order of importance. This information (customer identification, needs and importance rankings) forms the first part of the “House of Quality.”
Write a narrative description that includes:
Who are the “customers” for your design?
For each customer, what needs exist to be met from your device? State these in high-level terms and justify why you believe each is important to the customer.
“Low cost” is high-level. “Cost less than $10” is too specific – it is on the order of a specification, which we will address later.
Use the Analytical Hierarchical Process to rank all needs against each other to determine the relative importance of each. Include the AHP chart as a figure.