Determining vehicle-level specifications for a new car program considering market environments and engineering design constraints

Abstract

Designing a marketable automobile for target markets is an important challenge in the globalized market environment. What makes the vehicle planning even more challenging includes various factors such as engineering feasibility, change of market environment, enforced regulations, and ongoing advancement of technology. In this circumstance, the complexity of automobile design arises from the fact that both the target market's customer preferences and engineering characteristics should be taken into account in balanced as well as quantitative manners. This paper develops a balanced model for determining vehicle-level specifications for a new car program of an automaker considering both the customer preferences on attributes and the engineering characteristics with design constraints. The proposed model takes into account the interrelation of specifications, advancement of technology, vehicle style concepts, and customer preference changes influenced by the fluctuation of market environments. The major vehicle-level specifications of the next-generation automobile model are determined by maximizing the marketability of an auto with meeting the constructed design constraints. The model was validated with the existing mid-size sedans in the U.S. market. Copyright © 2013 by ASME.