( we need to link this topics to practical example as a half part of our presentation)
PRODUCT QUALITY
What is quality?
If a product fulfills the customer’s expectations, the customer will be pleased and consider that the product is of acceptable or even high quality. If his or her expectations are not fulfilled, the customer will consider that the product is of low quality.
This means that the quality of a product may be defined as “its ability to fulfill the customer’s needs and expectations”. Quality needs to be defined firstly in terms of parameters or characteristics, which vary from product to product. For example, for a mechanical or electronic product these are performance, reliability, safety and appearance. For pharmaceutical products, parameters such as physical and chemical characteristics, medicinal effect, toxicity, taste and shelf life may be important. For a food product they will include taste, nutritional properties, texture, and shelf life and so on.
"Time was when a man could order a pair of shoes directly from the cobbler. By measuring the foot himself and personally handling all aspects of manufacturing, the cobbler could assure the customer would be satisfied," lamented Dr. Yoji Akao, one of the founders of QFD, in his private lectures.
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) was developed to bring this personal interface to modern manufacturing and business. In today's industrial society, where the growing distance between producers and users is a concern, QFD links the needs of the customer (end user) with design, development, engineering, manufacturing, and service functions.
QFD is: 1. Understanding Customer Requirements 2. Quality Systems Thinking + Psychology + Knowledge/Epistemology 3. Maximizing Positive Quality That Adds Value 4. Comprehensive Quality System for Customer Satisfaction 5. Strategy to Stay Ahead of The Game
As a quality system that implements elements of Systems Thinking with elements of Psychology and Epistemology (knowledge), QFD provides a system of comprehensive development process for: * Understanding 'true' customer needs from the customer's perspective * What 'value' means to the customer, from the customer's perspective * Understanding how customers or end users become interested, choose, and are satisfied * Analyzing how do we know the needs of the customer * Deciding what features to include * Determining what level of performance to deliver * Intelligently linking the needs of the customer with design, development, engineering, manufacturing, and service functions * Intelligently linking Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) with the front end Voice of Customer analysis and the entire design system
QFD is a comprehensive quality system that systematically links the needs of the customer with various business functions and organizational processes, such as marketing, design, quality, production, manufacturing, sales, etc., aligning the entire company toward achieving a common goal. It does so by seeking both spoken and unspoken needs, identifying positive quality and business opportunities, and translating these into actions and designs by using transparent analytic and prioritization methods, empowering organizations to exceed normal expectations and provide a level of unanticipated excitement that generates value. The QFD methodology can be used for both tangible products and non-tangible services, including manufactured goods, service industry, software products, IT projects, business process development, government, and healthcare, environmental Initiatives and many other applications.

(And from text book page umber 174 to 179…………. If u guys find it relevant)

STANDARDIZATION

As a design is being developed from the conceptual level to the detailed level, a physical and functional requirement envelope is defined in which a part must fit and perform. Within the constraints of this envelope, a designer must design or select a part or assembly for use. A designer may have many alternative ways to design a part to meet requirements within this envelope.
While the design of a custom part or selection of a new part may be the most optimal approach to meet product requirements from the designer's point of view, it may not be the best overall approach for the company. Product cost and quality may be negatively affected by the proliferation of specialized items that require specialized capabilities or prevent efficient manufacture and procurement.
Minimizing the number of active or approved parts through standardization not only simplifies product design, but can also result in operational efficiencies and lower inventories. A formal policy of parts standardization and emphasis on use of parts from an approved parts list (APL) for certain commodities provides management direction to the designer.

Group technology (GT) and Component Supplier Management (CSM) systems can facilitate standardization through retrieval of a similar part's design to consider for use or as a basis for developing a new design. By providing a classification structure to store and retrieve design information, an engineer can avoid "re-inventing the wheel" and the design function can evolve toward the use of standards. CSM systems maintain information about approved parts and suppliers and provide easy access and cross reference to this information.
The engineer would determine the characteristics of the item that is needed and identify similar parts that are available through retrieval. One of these parts may function equally as well or there may be a non-critical specification (e.g., tolerance, finish, dimension, etc.) on an existing part that could be changed to suit both needs. If the existing designs were not satisfactory, the design data could be used to facilitate the design of a new part, particularly with computer-aided design tools. This approach can be extended to identify existing tooling and fixtures which also might be used, avoiding additional re-design.
Standardize and use common parts and materials to facilitate design activities, to minimize the amount of inventory in the system, and to standardize handling and assembly operations. Common parts will result in lower inventories, reduced costs and higher quality. Operator learning is simplified and there is a greater opportunity for automation as the result of higher production volumes and operation standardization. Limit exotic or unique components because suppliers are less likely to compete on quality or cost for these components. The classification and retrieval capabilities of product data management (PDM) systems and component supplier management (CSM) systems can be utilized by designers to facilitate retrieval of similar designs and material catalogs or approved parts lists can serve as references for common purchased and stocked parts.
SIMPLIFICATION
In addition to standardization, simplification of part and product designs also offers significant opportunities to reduce costs and improve quality. Designers need to evaluate if there is an easier way to accomplish the part function. DFM tools and principles provide a structured approach to seeking simplified designs. Product complexity can be further reduced by utilizing a modular building block approach to assembling products. Through standard product modules, a wide variety of products can be assembled from a more limited number of modules, thereby simplifying the design and manufacturing process. By simplifying and standardizing designs, establishing design retrieval mechanisms, and embedding preferred manufacturing processes in the preferred part list, design and production efficiencies are enhanced.
Simplify the design and reduce the number of parts because for each part, there is an opportunity for a defective part and an assembly error. The probability of a perfect product goes down exponentially as the number of parts increases. As the number of parts goes up, the total cost of fabricating and assembling the product goes up. Automation becomes more difficult and more expensive when more parts are handled and processed. Costs related to purchasing, stocking, and servicing also go down as the number of parts are reduced. Inventory and work-in-process levels will go down with fewer parts. As the product structure and required operations are simplified, fewer fabrication and assembly steps are required, manufacturing processes can be integrated and lead-times further reduced. The designer should go through the assembly part by part and evaluate whether the part can be eliminated, combined with another part, or the function can be performed in another way. To determine the theoretical minimum number of parts, ask the following: Does the part move relative to all other moving parts? Must the part absolutely be of a different material from the other parts? Must the part be different to allow possible disassembly?

Maintainability
Main ability refers to the ease and or cost with which a product or services is maintained or refers to the ease and or cost with which a product or services is maintained or repaired. Products can be made easier to maintain by assembling them I modules, like computers, so that entire control panels, cards, or disk drives can be replaced when they malfunction. The location of critical parts or parts subject to failure affects the ease if disassembly and thus repair. Instructions that teach consumer how to anticipate malfunctions and correct them themselves can be included with the product. Specifying regular maintenance schedule is a part of maintabillty, as is proper planning for the availability of critical replacement parts.
One quantitative measure of maintainability is mean time to repair (MTTR). Combined with the reliability measure of MTBF, we can calculate the average availability of uptime of a system as
System avaibitly, SA= MTBF ------------- MTBF + MTTR
(Example from book page number 165)