An intelligent information framework relating customer requirements and product characteristics

Market driven strategies encourage enterprises to produce products that cus tomers want to buy, and therefore can improve an enterprise's market positi on. Few organisations make effective use of market, competitor and customer information. Information modelling and intelligent support tools help defi ne product specifications focused on fulfilling customer requirements and f acilitating information sharing between members of extended design teams. D esign effort can be targeted at particular product features, which yield ma ximum benefits for customer satisfaction. The Market Driven Design System p rovides comprehensive, intelligent support, meeting the challenges of effec tively modelling, using and sharing valuable, yet imprecise, non-technical market information during product design. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. AU rights reserved.