Transforming brand core values into perceived quality: A Volvo case study

Core values are an important part of Volvo Car Group’s and Volvo Trucks’ strategic development plans. These two companies share the same core values, quality, safety, and environmental care, but they approach these values in different ways. This study seeks to understand how industry professionals and customers perceive these core values and the attributes that are associated with them, using semi-structured interviews with industry professionals from both companies and quantitative survey methods with customers. The purposes of this study are to investigate how designers convey core values to customers through product attributes and how customers perceive those core values through the same attributes. Such an understanding reveals the commonalities and discrepancies between the perspectives of producers and customers, and can contribute to more effective design processes that communicate company values in the early product development phases

Systems thinking in tolerance and quality-related design decision-making

This paper describes a new approach for using systems thinking in the context of design decisions that affect product quality. Such decisions include dimensional tolerances, material choice, and product geometry, which are shown to have links with product quality and performance, profitability, sustainability consequences, and resulting market and governance changes. These links are presented in a systems model that maps the drivers and consequences of these quality-related decisions, ultimately showing that design decisions influence future design decisions based on the sustainability-related outcomes of the resulting products. The systems model is then used in a design scenario of a mobile phone, where important information about the consequences of the product is gleaned by using the proposed model

Policy and demand as drivers for product quality and sustainability: A market systems approach

The market is a complex system with many different stakeholders and interactions. A number of decisions within this system affect the design of new products, not only from design teams but also from consumers, producers, and policy-makers. Market systems studies have shown how profit-optimal producer decisions regarding product design and pricing can influence a number of different factors including the quality, environmental impact, production costs, and ultimately consumer demand for the product. This study models the ways that policies and consumer demand combine in a market systems framework to influence optimal product design and, in particular, product quality and environmental sustainability. Implementing this model for the design of a mobile phone case shows how different environmental impact assessment methods, levels of taxation, and factors introduced to the consumer decision-making process will influence producer profits and overall environmental impacts. This demonstrates how different types of policies might be evaluated for their effectiveness in achieving economic success for the producer and reduced environmental impacts for society, and a "win-win" scenario was uncovered in the case of the mobile phone

A market systems analysis of the U.S. Sport Utility Vehicle market considering frontal crash safety technology and policy.

Active safety features and adjustments to the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) consumer-information crash tests have the potential to decrease the number of serious traffic injuries each year, according to previous studies. However, literature suggests that risk reductions, particularly in the automotive market, are often accompanied by adjusted consumer risk tolerance, and so these potential safety benefits may not be fully realized due to changes in consumer purchasing or driving behavior. This article approaches safety in the new vehicle market, particularly in the Sport Utility Vehicle and Crossover Utility Vehicle segments, from a market systems perspective. Crash statistics and simulations are used to predict the effects of design and policy changes on occupant crash safety, and discrete choice experiments are conducted to estimate the values consumers place on vehicle attributes. These models are combined in a market simulation that forecasts how consumers respond to the available vehicle alternatives, resulting in predictions of the market share of each vehicle and how the change in fleet mixture influences societal outcomes including injuries, fuel consumption, and firm profits. The model is tested for a scenario where active safety features are implemented across the new vehicle fleet and a scenario where the U.S. frontal NCAP test speed is modified. While results exhibit evidence of consumer risk adjustment, they support adding active safety features and lowering the NCAP frontal test speed, as these changes are predicted to improve the welfare of both firms and society

Comparing Standards and Policies for Sustainability in Tolerance Optimization

Design for sustainability often considers three potentially competing objectives in economic, ecological, and social sustainability. In general, business success hinges on economic sustainability, while ecological and social concerns are treated as secondary objectives for marketing or political purposes. Previous research has shown that there is a tradeoff among these sustainability objectives regarding design decisions that include tolerances and material choices, and different market- or policy-driven incentives may result in different optimal design decisions. This study presents and demonstrates an approach for evaluating legislative opportunities that may internalize ecological and social objectives into the economic objectives of product-developing firms, using the case study of an automotive body panel. Modeling and simulation tools from Computer Aided Tolerancing (CAT), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and design optimization are combined using a novel framework to show how sustainability-driven government policies such as taxation may influence design decisions and sustainability outcomes

Taxation and Transparency: How Policy Decisions Impact Product Quality and Sustainability

Product markets can be modeled as complex systems that account for a diverse set of stakeholders and interactions. Decisions by all of the stakeholders in these systems can affect the design of new products, not only from design teams but also from consumers, producers, and policymakers. Studies of market systems have shown how producers can make profit-optimal decisions on product design and pricing, and how those decisions influence a number of different factors including the quality, environmental impact, production costs, and ultimately consumer demand for the product. This study presents and demonstrates the use of a framework for modeling the ways that policies and consumer demand influence optimal product design and, in particular, product quality and environmental sustainability. Employing this model for the tolerance and material design decisions for a mobile phone case shows how different environmental impact scales, taxation levels, and information available to consumers will influence producer profits and overall environmental impacts. This demonstrates how different policies can be evaluated for their impacts on economic success for producers and reduced environmental impacts for society, and a "win-win" scenario is found for the mobile phone case

A Multi-objective Tolerance Optimization Approach for Economic, Ecological, and Social Sustainability

Sustainable design requires simultaneous consideration of the economic, ecological, and social consequences of design decisions. The selection of dimensional tolerances and materials are two such decisions that have impacts in all three of these areas. This article presents an optimization framework along with generalized models for considering sustainability and understanding how different aspects of sustainability may trade off with one another. A mobile phone design is used as a case study to demonstrate the strengths of the approach when varying manufacturing tolerance and material choice, and the results include three-dimensional Pareto frontiers illustrating the design tradeoffs

Sustainability-driven tolerancing and design optimization of an aircraft engine component

Design for sustainability requires decision-makers to simultaneously consider the economic, ecological, and social consequences of their products and production processes for a broad range of stakeholders. While some choices may mutually benefit the three sustainability categories, there are often tradeoffs where improving one objective comes at a cost to another. Previous studies have shown that geometric tolerance decisions can affect all three sustainability criteria and create tradeoffs, particularly when they are made in conjunction with other design decisions. This paper presents a framework for analyzing product design decisions through a multi-objective optimization approach to sustainable design, tailored to the application of an aircraft engine turbine component. Models are constructed for production and maintenance costs, ecological impacts from manufacturing and use, and social impacts from neighborhood noise and delays caused by reliability-based maintenance events. Using advanced computational simulation and optimization, tradeoffs are shown and sustainable decision-making strategies are discussed

Tolerance Optimization of a Mobile Phone Considering Consumer Demand for Quality and Sustainability in China, Sweden, and the United States

Dimensional tolerances are chosen during the product development process to balance quality requirements against manufacturing costs. Designers typically judge how much variance should be allowed while still maintaining the perception of a high quality product or brand, but this is rarely based on an understanding of how consumers perceive that variance. Additionally, ecological sustainability priorities are often chosen without knowing how they will be received by consumers. This paper presents a survey-based technique for understanding how tolerance and pricing decisions influence a product developing firm’s profits, accounting for consumer perceptions of quality and environmental friendliness. A case study of a mobile phone design is explored, including variance propagation modeling, the design and administration of an online choice-based conjoint (CBC) survey, construction of consumer demand models, and profit maximization for the markets in three different countries. The results show a slight preference for high quality products compared with stronger preferences for other product attributes like low price, and the differences among the three markets are highlighted