Defining “quality” from customers’ perspective and controlling it throughout the product development process is a fuzzy and enduring task, especially for companies that are, simultaneously, fighting cost pressure and shortening product and technology life cycles. The poor predictability of customer demands complicates the definition of established requirements. During the product development process, product experts interpret the customer requirements and transfer them into product specifications. Due to the subjective nature of customer demands and the vast field of human perception, a huge number of product parameters have to be analyzed and specified to assure a comprehensive and successful approach. In order to keep an adequate cost–value ratio in production, it is not possible to pinpoint “hard” tolerances for each parameter. This article depicts the structured approach to choose the parameters, which are relevant for the customers’ quality judgment, and to tolerance “soft” customer perceptions. The emphasis lies on defining and scaling product parameters by combining product tests, interviews and focus groups for evaluation and interpretation by statistical means. Furthermore, the gathered information will be transferred into a “describing” specification, which will be supported by a tolerancing process based on statistical means.

Analysis of evaluation results revealed a positive overall impression. Implementation into organizational structure was successful on all 3 quality stages: concept of project and CM-training were an adequate basis and appropriately put into practice by fulfilling prescribed objectives, topics and schedule (quality of structure). Rehabilitation managers identified themselves with the implementation process into DRV Westfalen (grading of CM training: M=1,67; SD=0,65; quality of process). Analogous, consultants reported a high level of satisfaction during implementation of new counseling process (possible span: 1-4; M=3,11; SD=0,33; quality of results). Regarding implementation of counseling process, sample fitted into 3 selection criteria wherefore the correct insurants were picked in RehaFuturReal(®) (quality of structure). CM-orientated counseling approach was properly implemented into everyday work of RM by using CM-instruments for documentation (quality of process). RM were highly satisfied (possible span: 1-4) with counseling performance (M=3,43; SD=0,77). Employers also rated counseling performance positively (M=3,38; SD=0,85). By contrast, surveying insurants revealed a heterogeneous impression of satisfaction (M=2,97; SD=1,03) (quality of results).

Interdisciplinary skills gain increasing importance in university and professional contexts. To support these interdisciplinary skills, problem-based learning (PBL) is regularly used in a course for biomedical education. In this study, we investigated whether enhancing consciousness for planning processes can support the e ectiveness of PBL concepts in an intervention-control group design. Results indicated clear evidence for this: planning skills were associated with better PBL performance. Concluding, self-re ection of planning skills is useful to increase outcome performance of students in PBL courses.

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