What’s in a name?

While Shakespeare may have been correct in observing that “that

which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, most people would not
know what you were talking about if you referred to it as a “bee leaf pollen perch”.

Similarly, the name “Quality Function Deployment” gives little hint as to what the tool
actually is or what purpose it serves. So why is its name so perplexing? The answer lies
in two main issues…

First, “Quality Function Deployment” was originally created by two Japanese professors
back in the 1960’s (Drs. Yoji Akao and Shigeru Mizuno). Thus, the process was
originally given a Japanese name, which was later translated into English. The original
Japanese name, “Hin-shitsu Ki-no Ten-kai”, was translated quite litterally into the name
“Quality Function Deployment”. Although the name supposedly carries with it a more
intuitive meaning in Japanese, it doesn’t seem to have the same readily apparent meaning
in English.

Additionally, the term “QFD” is used by many people today to refer to a series of “House
of Quality” matrices strung together to define customer requirements and translate them
into specific product features to meet those needs. However, these prioritization matrices
were only a small part of the system that Drs. Akao and Mizuno originally created. (See
“What is the House of Quality? Why it isn’t a QFD?” at qfdi.org for more information on
this topic.) Thus, the application of the term “QFD” has changed over the course of the
past 30+ years as well. Even though much was lost in translation from its Japanese name,
“Quality Function Deployment” was a much more apropos name for the system of
processes originally created by Akao and Mizumo than it is for the derivative tool that it
has come to refer to today.

What is the House of Quality? Why it isn't a QFD?

The House of Quality is an assembly of several deployment hierarchies
and tables, including the Demanded Quality Hierarchy, Quality
Characteristics Hierarchy, the relationships matrix, the Quality Planning
Table, and Design Planning Table. It is a table that connects dots
between the Voice of the Customer and the Voice of the Engineer.

The House of Quality is commonly associated with QFD, and it seems to

be the only thing that need be done when implementing QFD in the
minds of many, who learned QFD from outdated 40 year old examples or
oversimplified information sources and software, unfortunately. This is a
most common myth even today and rarely the case.

In most QFD studies, the House of Quality is not the starting point. In
technology driven QFDs and Cost Reduction driven QFDs, the House of
Quality may not even be created. In Blitz QFD® where only a few critical
customer needs are deployed, the House of Quality may be completely
unnecessary. As Dr. Akao, the founder of QFD, has said many times,
"The House of Quality is not QFD".

How does QFD offer strategic advantage?

The expected and exciting requirements provide the best opportunity for
competitive advantage - if you can find a way to make them visible and
then deliver on them. However, in this fast changing world, hitting the
right target of customer satisfaction is made more difficult by fragmenting
customer segments, new technology, and competitive pressures. QFD
makes invisible requirements and strategic advantages visible, allows
you to prioritize and deliver on them in a focused product development
process.

Companies have reported many benefits of doing QFD. Early literature

describes how Toyota Auto Body reduced start-up losses by 61%. Mazda
educed late design changes by half, etc. U.S. and European companies
have reported such results as well. You can see the industry testimonials
to the benefits of QFD in the Symposium Transactions page.

How has QFD advanced over the years?

Like any good system, QFD has evolved over the years. Modern QFD
now incorporates many advancements that were not in traditional QFD.

For example, traditional QFD, originating from the build-to-spec practice

in the 1960s, centered around what is called '4-House' approach.
Companies that do their own design work have found this approach does
not integrate well into their new product development process and is too
time-consuming. Modern QFD is custom-tailored to identify the minimum
QFD effort required with the optimum tools and sequence, making QFD
more efficient and sustainable in today’s lean business environment.
Large, complex tools such as the House of Quality (HOQ) are now often
replaced with smaller, faster ones that provide a level of analysis that is
faster and easier. Modern QFD also upgraded math in the QFD matrices
to meet the mathematical rigor demanded by Six Sigma precision.

Traditional QFD often did not go deep enough into the Voice of the
Customer to uncover unspoken needs because it began at the time when
most design work was done by the customer's engineers. Modern QFD
has a set of rigorous front-end tools to refine the Voice of the Customer
into spoken and unspoken customer needs, leading to more innovative
solutions.

Additionally, Modern QFD includes psychological and lifestyle needs, not

just functional needs. Today, consumers are making the purchase
decision more and more on emotional needs and image issues. Lifestyle
QFD connects consumers’ needs for psychological and lifestyle-
enhancing solutions with your product development and branding.

Modern QFD also has components for Schedule Deployment and Project
Deployment based on Critical Chain Project Management to improve
allocation of constrained resources and finish more projects on time.

Overall, Modern QFD today provides a much better framework for

integration of various innovative methods into your product development
process.

What QFD software do you recommend?

At this writing, virtually commercially sold QFD software uniformly have
two things in common: 1) 4-phased "House of Quality" centered
approach; and 2) improper math (such as importance and priority
calculations).

The 4-phase House of Quality approach is a truncated 'partial' QFD

deployment which was hastily adopted in the 1980s by American
automotive industry and was never updated to help them keep
competitive in changing markets. Such approach may be all right as an
academic exercise, but definitely not for real projects by professionals
and businesses who want to stay ahead of competition. The improper
math utilized in those software would make your downstream
deployments and analysis invalid and may even be harmful to your
project outcome (for example, the improper use of math would skew
priority setting and subsequently lead to faulty importance calculations,
etc.).

Another drawback of these so-called QFD software is the use of an

oversimplified cookie-cutter approach that is forced on to your unique
new product development process and business goals that demand
efficiency, comprehensiveness, competitive ingenuity, and innovation.
For this reason, top researchers and practitioners of QFD prefer to use
MS Excel® worksheets. If you use Modern QFD approach, no such matrix
or software may not be needed at all, depending on your project and
goals,