The Use of the Intermediate Representations in Developing New Products

The objective of this paper is to identify solutions in order to satisfy customer needs. There are difficulties in identifying and collecting customer needs and in translating them into functional requirements. The paper presents the results of a multidisciplinary research that relies on the use of means, tools and methods of engineering and marketing. In the first part of the paper, difficulties encountered by a company in identifying and collecting the needs from an existing and potential customer are presented. In the second part, Intermediate Representations are defined and a case study on the advantages and disadvantages of the use of Intermediate Representations in the development of new products is presented.