Examination of Factors Affecting Customer Oriented Product Design in Automotive Industry

Existing competitive environment leads manufacturers to focus on customer expectations more than ever. One of the reasons behind this focus is that the design concepts which are flexible to customer needs add incredible value to the product. In this chapter, customer oriented product design for an automobile is examined according to design concepts and their causal relationships using fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) to help automotive industry to be customer focused. Individual assessments are used in the analysis rather than aggregate them to obtain common customer’s preferences. It is found that the relations and the steady states of the concepts are differentiated among the customers. The results of the study can be used as a road map for automotive industry for customer oriented product design.