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New product development (NPD) is the cornerstone of manufacturing companies. An engineer‐to‐order (ETO) company can achieve its business objectives by reducing design iterations and rework, recognizing customer’s requirements up‐front and building quality into design and manufacturing. This paper discusses differences between ETO and make‐to‐stock (MTS) companies and justifies the need for a separate framework for ETO in NPD. Four frameworks from published literature were analyzed and it was found that the frameworks were not suitable for ETO companies due to the differences in operations and product design activities. This paper proposes a set of requirements for establishing a design and manufacture framework specifically for ETO companies. The framework can aid design and manufacturing engineers to plan their work to include customers, suppliers, consultants, contractors and manufacturing concern during the design stage. The framework requirements can serve as a foundation of further work to be carried out in this area.

The case study method has been widely used as a research instrument for data collection to build theory. Reports on the use of case study method for new product development (NPD) in an engineer‐to‐order (ETO) organization. Discusses previous work on NPD in the literature in order to determine the knowledge gap that exists. Discovers that NPD work in an ETO organization is lacking despite its importance. Proposes a case study method as a tool to bridge this gap. Explains and justifies the reasons for choosing the case study method. Also describes case study design with the case study protocol. Then discusses the execution of the case study, method of analysis and the limitations of case study research. The findings will assist researchers who are interested in pursuing future research work in this area.

The field of quality has undergone significant changes as reflected by changes in its definition, paradigms, approaches, techniques, and scope of application. This paper reviews emerging trends and issues focusing on quality engineering. Changes in customer expectation have driven the changes in the technology of design and manufacturing, which is becoming more important in satisfying individual customer expectations. This also calls for special attention to the engineering aspects of quality. Brief reviews on recent advances in the prominent quality tools such as statistical process control, quality function deployment, and design of experiment are reported. General trends in quality engineering research show the tools are being enhanced, integrated, computerized and broaden their application bases, where possible opportunities for further investigation are indicated. Among others these include contributions in multiple‐response optimization, intelligent quality systems, multivariate SPC, and practical and simple guidelines for actual implementation of various tools.

Machine design and manufacture is the key to the advancement of manufacturing industry. Before any machine can be designed, it is important to establish requirements of the machine. Identifies quality function deployment (QFD) as one of the tools that can be used to identify customer needs and link the needs to product design. By bringing forward customers’ requirements into the design process, design rework and unnecessary iteration between design and manufacture can be reduced. In this project, QFD for a pultrusion machine design has been chosen as a case study. QFD was applied at the front end of the design process. The QFD process started with identifying the customers and determining their needs. These needs were translated into engineering requirements which were then used to formulate general specifications of the machine. A step by step approach was introduced to make the QFD process more manageable. Reports on the first phase of a research project in which QFD was used to capture all vital information from the customers and translated that into engineering requirements.