Chapter 3

Incorporating the Voice of Customer in Product Design with Quality Function

Deployment (QFD)

3.1 Introduction
Broadly defined, quality refers to the ability of a product or service to consistently meet or exceed
customer requirements or expectations. Different customers will have different expectations, so a
working definition of quality is customer-dependent. Quality can be defined as meeting customer
needs and providing superior value. This focus on satisfying the customer’s needs places an
emphasis on techniques such as Quality Function Deployment to help understand those needs and
plan a product, or service to provide superior value.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a systematic process for motivating a business to focus on
its customers. It is used by cross-functional teams to identify and resolve issues involved in
providing products, processes, services and strategies which will more than satisfy their customers.
Quality professionals refer to QFD by many names, including matrix product planning, decision
matrices, and customer-driven engineering. QFD is a methodology for taking the Voice of the
Customer and using that information to drive aspects of product development.

QFD is a necessary tool to accumulate the major pieces of information about the product in a
disciplined a way to make us understand the design problem:
• Listening and understanding the “Voice of the customer”
• Developing an engineering specification
• Finding out how the specification can meet the customer’s requirements
• Determining goals to work toward and achieve our desired outcome
 3.2 House of Quality: High relation (Rating 5)
Medium relation (Rating 3)
Low relation (Rating 1)

Highly positive relationship ++

Positive relationship + P=Poor
Highly negative relationship -- F=Fair
Negative relationship - G=Good

Moving Mechanism Efficiency

Conveyor Load Capability

mtandt LTD Scissor lift

CROWN FORKLIFT
Rotation of the Roller
Platform dimension

Collapsed Height

Motor Efficiency
Technical
Customer Rating

Load Capacity

Head Rotation
Lifting Height

Lifting Speed

Our Product
Requirements

Drivability
Customer
Requirements

Safety 10 P F G

Reasonable price 9 P F G

Reduced Labor cost. 8 G G G

Time saving. 8 F F G

Ease of maintenance 7 P P F

Ease of control 6 F F G

Ease of use 6 P F G

Flexibility 6 P F G

Portability 5 P G F

Space optimization 4 P F G

Our Rating 199 85 127 62 139 127 49 92 126 84 71 F G G

3.3 Reasons behind Correlation
• As load capacity depends on the dimension of base of the lifter, there is highly positive
relationship between them.
• Rotation of the rollers depends on the design of the base containing rollers. So there is a
positive relationship between them.
• Increase of weight of the load decreases lifting speed. So there is highly negative
relationship between them.
• If the motor capacity increases, the load capacity will also increase. So there is a positive
relationship between them.
• Up to how much the lifter can collapse depends on motor capacity. So there is a positive
relationship between them.
• If weight of conveyed load increases, the lifting speed will decrease too. So there is a
negative relationship between then.
• The more the moving mechanism efficiency, the easier will be head rotation. So there is a
positive relationship between them.
• The load capacity as well as the condition of the shape of conveyed load depends on the
design of the platform. So there is a positive relationship between them.