An integrated identification approach of agile engineering characteristics considering sensitive customer requirements

Abstract Under the effects of internal factors and the external environment, some customer requirements can be extremely sensitive to change; these are known as sensitive requirements. These requirements drive the identification and design of the relevant engineering characteristics. This study defines such characteristics as agile engineering characteristics (AECs), which are crucial for redesigning products and prolonging their service life but attract limited research and practice attention. The research question of identifying the product AECs is answered in this study, and three key issues are solved in the proposed methodology. First, the contribution of product engineering characteristics to customer requirements is calculated using an orthogonal experimental design, and the optimal level combination of engineering characteristics to satisfy the customer requirements is determined through the analysis of variation. Subsequently, the relative importance of engineering characteristics is calculated based on data envelopment analysis. Next, an agility index is defined by integrating the customer satisfaction degree, the relative importance degree of engineering characteristics, and the variation of the level of engineering characteristics, to identify the AECs. Finally, based on the identification of the AECs of an electric vehicle air-conditioning heat pump scroll compressor, the results are analysed and compared to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.