Determining Customer Reliability Requirements

Determining What Customers Really Want Concerning Reliability

Customers want the benefits created by your product. They want the time savings, the reduce yield loss, they want the simplicity, coolness, speed, etc.

Customer buy your product to solve a problem, they do not buy it to simply enjoy the features. The features have to do something of value. They have to provide a benefit.

If your product fails, the feature doesn’t work. Customers do not realize the benefit they expected.

In short, your customer wants your product to work as expected. When asked a customer will tell you they do not want to have product failures.

Day in the Life of a Product During Use

In order to design a product that will not fail while in use, you and your team need to understand where and how customers use the product. The where is more than in North America, or the Asian market; you need to understand the surrounding environment when the product is in use or storage. Indoor, outdoor, protected, air conditioned, direct sunlight, etc.

A common technique is to imagine a day in the life of your product. If it is a server providing storage and communication services for your company, it may be humming away 24 hours a day within a climate controlled computer room. It may see different loads depending on the pace of demands.