Perceived quality is one of the most critical aspects of product development that defines the successful design. This paper presents a new approach to perceived quality assessment by examining its elements, decomposed into a structure with the bottom-up sensory approach from the level of basic (‘ground’) attributes, covering almost every aspect of quality perception from the engineering viewpoint. The paper proposes a novel method for perceived quality attributes relative importance ranking, resulting in the balanced perceived quality of the final product within the given conditions. The proposed method helps to reach the equilibrium of the product’s quality equation from the perspective of design effort, time, and costs estimations. The authors introduce the Perceived Quality Framework (PQF), which is the taxonomy system for perceived quality attributes and the core of the attributes importance ranking (PQAIR) method. The research outcomes are based on findings of the qualitative exploratory study, including European and North American premium and luxury automotive manufacturers. An empirical structural validity test was performed to assess the usability and rigour of the proposed method. The results indicate that perceived quality evaluation can be significantly improved during all stages of product development. Abbreviations: PQF: Perceived Quality Framework; PQAIR: Perceived Quality Attributes Importance Ranking; TPQ: Technical Perceived Quality; VPQ: Value-based Perceived Quality; OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer.

This paper presents a methodology and a software that allows assemblies to be evaluated with respect to robustness and geometrical stability. The assembly robustness evaluation aims at detecting design and assembly solutions that are sensitive to variation and may cause problems later during production. It is based on Suh's independence axiom, stating that in a good, uncoupled design, each functional requirement is satisfied by one and only one design parameter. The methodology enables the designer to evaluate the geometrical sensitivity of the assembly, what the sources of variation are, their importance for the overall robustness and in what order to improve the design. A possible result from the analysis may be that the concept must be changed in some way, either by changing the way parts are located with respect to each other or by using assembly fixtures for positioning. The software is implemented in a Microsoft Windows environment and has an IGES interface that enables the designer to import computer aided design (CAD) geometry from an arbitrary CAD system, and perform assembly robustness analysis.

Perceived quality is one of the most important factors underlying success of car manufacturers today. There is a significant amount of literature regarding perceived quality from a marketing research perspective, applied psychology and consumer research. From an engineering viewpoint, perceived quality is represented in the literature mainly by the work that assesses different aspects of perceived quality in order to evaluate them in the early design stages. As a result of this no theoretical framework has yet been compiled that combines customer view on perceived quality and the engineering prospects of this broad term. Consequently, terms regarding perceived quality components and elements often have multiple meanings or meanings similar to each other. There is a need to standardize the terminology and definitions related to perceived quality more concretely. This paper presents the basis of a theoretical framework in an attempt to build a model, including different aspects of perceived quality regarding automotive industry needs. Based on the literature review and industry examples, the authors propose a common terminology and perceived quality definition in the field of the automotive industry