Evaluation of vital parameters for design of new product

Any product design goes through many phases. One of the main considerations is the specific mix of design parameters that affect the acceptance of the product in the market. The acceptance of the product, in turn, depends on some of the key factors such as reliability, safety, quality, performance, cost, ease of maintenance, ease of assembly and so on. The designer´s perspective, therefore, is wide and the designer must be able to visualize the effect of each of the parameters. It is also known that the factors affecting the acceptability of a particular product are different from the factors that affect the acceptability of other product. So, it becomes imperative to know the factors that affect the acceptability of the product before the design is started and the effect of each of the factor on the overall acceptability of the product. An attempt is made to weigh the effect of some of the factors in the case of design of pumps in Indian market. The analysis using traditional statistical methods is verified using ANN methods.