ABSTRACT
This heading implies there are other requirements that do not relate to the product that may form part of the customer requirements. However, ISO 9000 defines a product as the result of a process and includes services among these. It is therefore difficult to imagine any aspect of customer requirements that would not relate to the product or service that is being provided. Requirements related to the product or service could include:
● Characteristics that the product is required to exhibit, i.e. the inherent characteristics
materials or the conditions under which personnel may work ● Management requirements related to the manner in which the project will be
managed, the product developed, produced and supplied ● Security requirements relating to the protection of information ● Financial arrangements for the deposit of bonds, payment conditions,
invoicing etc ● Commercial requirements such as intellectual property, proprietary rights,
labelling, warranty, resale, copyright etc ● Licensing requirements relating to individuals permitted to provide a ser-
vice such as a pilot’s licence, driving licence, professional licence to practise (RFI/020)
● Personnel arrangements such as access to the organization’s facilities by customer personnel and vice versa
A process for determining product requirements should be designed so that it takes as its input the identified need for a product and passes this through several stages where requirements from various sources are determined, balanced and confirmed as the definitive requirements that form the basis for product realization. The input can either be a customer specific requirement or the market specification that results from market research (see Chapter 5 under the heading Customer focus) or a sales order for an existing product. However, this is not blue sky stuff – remember the product realization process is triggered by a customer placing a demand on the organization either because it has a product to sell or a capability to offer. The output may indeed be presented in several documents – the product requirement specification containing the hardware and software requirements and the service requirement specification containing the service requirements. Alternatively where service is secondary, the requirement may be contained in the contract.
