QFD

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a structured method of defining customer needs or

requirements and compares them with product specifications or requirements. In short, it is a
way to capture "the voice of the customer." Once the customer specifications are recorded using
a variety of methods, the customer requirements are plotted in a weighted matrix and the
interactions between those requirements and product specifications/requirements are easily
visible. This provides an understanding of what elements of the product satisfy the needs of the
customer, and thus helps ensure a product of high quality.

Customer Requirements: The customer requirements are listed to the left along with their
importance in the next column. This column is a list depicting the "voice of the customer" which
was captured in the surveys and research done. The column numerically valuing the importance
of each requirement is specified by the constructor of the matrix.

Product Design Requirements: The product design requirements are listed as the column
headers of the matrix. They are established to respond to the customer requirements and are
organized into categories that are related to the requirements. In order to fully exercise the
advantage of this matrix, the design requirements should be measurable, meaningful, and
globally conveyed. It is important to make sure that all the requirements are related to customer
requirements and that all requirements have been addressed appropiately. It is not helpful to
make eight requirements that measure up to two customer attributes and have only a few relate to
the rest.

Relationships: The key on the upper right of the example describes the measurements for
relationships between customer and product design requirements. In this example, there are three
degrees of relationships: strong, moderate, and weak. The matrix then plots the relationship
values in each cell of the customer requirements vs. product design requirements matrix.
Relationships of requirements that are not related are left blank.

Interactions: The Interactions are listed on the top of the row of product design requirements.
They describe the importance of interactions between each of the product design requirements
with respect to themselves. It is also notable that this listing of interactions is in the form of a
triangle which resembles a roof to a house, thus explaining the nick name "house of quality." The
key in the upper left of the example describes the measurements of the interactions. In this case
there are four values: strong positive, mid positive, mid negative, strong negative. The cells of
the triangle are filled in accordingly (non-related interactions are left blank). It is important to
understand the value of these interactions. Positive interactions are optimal because it means that
both product requirements can be implemented without trade-offs. However, too many positive
interactions can mean redundancy in the product design requirements. The negative interactions
are the key ones to look for because the trade-offs will have substantial effect on the quality of
the product design depending on the weight of the customer requirements and the relationship
between customer and product requirements.

Competitive Evaluation: The right side column evaluates the current product against
competitor products in terms of customer requirements. This chart can be advantageous in terms
of seeing strengths and weaknesses in the competitors and establishing breakthrough attributes of
your product to result in an optimal market entrance.

Technical Evaluation: The fourth to bottom row states the relationship between the current
product and the competitors in terms of the product design requirements. This is used in junction
with the competitive evaluation column to help determine the competitor's strength and
weaknesses and establish breakthrough attributes of your product to close the gap with
competitors.
Target Value:  Preliminary target values for the product requirements.

Technical Difficulty: A rating of difficulty for each product design requirement. Though this is
not weighted with the relationship values, it is important to realize which design requirements
are more difficult to accomplish when analyzing product costs and time management in future
steps.

Importance Ratings: These values are the total values of the product between the weight factor
and relationship value for each column of product design requirements. The value of the
relationship is user defined (for example, strong could be 5, moderate is 3, and weak is 1).

Once the product planning matrix is completely constructed, one can analyze the components
and calculations of the matrix to develop product developing strategies. What trade-offs need to
be made, and should the target values be adjusted depending on the technical difficulties? These
are a few questions to consider when analyzing the matrix.