In times of
intense global competition and increasing customer demands, car
manufacturers are forced to launch new
products at regular intervals to remain
competitive. As the costs of developing a vehicle are immense, these products
must be successful in the market, which means that they need to be of high
product quality.
To invest in the
right development projects, it is necessary to evaluate as early
as
possible in the development process the quality, and with that the potential
success of a new
product in the market. lt is therefore the objective of this
thesis to establish criteria which allow the assessment of the Product
Quality in
the Definition
Stage. Hereby a method shall be developed which supports
project leaders in managing and assessing the quality of future products at the
very beginning of the design phase.
This thesis starts with an
analysis of the current situation of the global motor
industry and an overview of the historical evolution of quality. A description of
the Definition
Stage in development projects and its uncertainty factors follows,
as well as an
analysis of its objectives, tasks and ideal process procedures.
To dene the
quality in the Definition Phase, the author analysed the project
management literature concerning its influencing factors. lt showed that there
are
parameters that have an influence on the success of a product
development project. In the next stage, the objective of the Definition Stage
was defined, to reach Safety of Targets. By analysing this objective, the author
detected a
strong influence between the Product Quality and Project Quality in
this
early phase. To evaluate Safety of Targets, the author detected that these
criteria are not measurable. Therefore the author
developed substitute
parameters in close contact with design teams. The author claimed that these
factors allow the evaluation of Product and
Project Quality in the Definition
Stage. The factors are compared with the success factors in literature and the
parameters of the European. Business Excellence Model. The results confirm
the
findings of this thesis.
Based on these results, the author developed a two-step evaluation procedure.
lt contains a Self-Assessment
approach for project teams to evaluate the
quality in the Definition Stage. This procedure is followed by a Project Audit,
where an external audit team evaluates the
quality status of a project. This
procedure was developed by working closely with teams and is used in several
projects, which apply the method also in the downstream development stages.
Even if the
general applicability of the success factors and the methods could
not be demonstrated, the author recommends to expand the evaluation
procedure also to other industries, where the project managers find themselves
in same situation as in
product development projects in the motor industry