A Method to Compute Early Design Risk Using Customer Importance and Function-Flow Failure Rates

Abstract

The general method for using customer importance to validate a design misses the important opportunity to influence how that design is created. The intent of this research is to capture risk during the conceptual design stage. Risk is calculated using function-flow failure rates and customer importance. This allows the designer to effectively identify what functionality should be given additional importance during the generation and selection of design concepts. Functional risk using customer importance has not yet been investigated. In general, risk is implemented later in the design process. A generic process to calculate the risk is presented, then applied to an example where a subset of function-flows have been identified as generating 75 % of the risk.