2nd IAQ World Quality Forum – Bled Slovenia 13 October 2017

Prioritization Methodology for Quality Professionals using

ISO 16355 Guidance
Glenn H. Mazur
QFD Institute 1140 Morehead Ct. Ann Arbor MI USA, glenn@mazur.net

Abstract

In these days of limited budget, schedule, and human resources, decisions must be made in
line with these constraits in the most effective way. Operationally, this means that not every
project can get funded, not every innovation can get vetted, not every initiative can get
deployed. W. E. Deming in his book The New Economics, writes “management is prediction”
[1] which includes predicting which of several options best serves the goals of the
organization, regardless of whether the organization is governmental, NGO, or for-profit. In
most cases, acting upon these decisions requires collaboration among colleagues – higher
level managers, peers, and subordinates within the organization and outside. “C” suite
predictions are often necessary even when information is incomplete, inconsistent, and highly
subjective. In many of the complex decisions involving global problems, language and
cultural paradigms can add further noise to the process. In such group decision making,
people must make a decision to act or not act based upon the impact on the stakeholders and
constituents of that decision, and then must hold each other accountable for carrying out the
plan.

Quality managers have a dual responsibility not only to make such predications within the
quality function, but also to guide other functional managers in the “C” suite on how to make
high-quality predictions themselves. Quality professionals have a set of information
management tools that can be used to acquire, structure, analyze, prioritize, and carry out such
decisions. One such tool has shown itself to extremely useful in getting people to express their
personal opinions and yet reach a group consensus, quantify these opinions, and then
synthesize these into a logical and defensible series of judgments leading to action plans in
the real world. This tool is called the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). This paper explains
AHP’s role in the new ISO 16355 standard for quality function deployment (QFD) and how it
can improve decision making at both the personal and professional level.

Key words: QFD, ISO 16355, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Multicriteria decision
making

1 ISO 16355 for Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

QFD was developed in Japan during the 1960s to assure quality in the design and
development of new products and services. Key to QFD is:

• Assuring product quality requires a multi-functional team approach. Quality engineers

should engage early in the process to truly affect customer satisfaction and value.

• For customer-focused design, it is critical to involve the users, buyers, and other
stakeholders who can make or influence a purchase decision.

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• Different stakeholders have different needs with different strengths. It is important to

get an accurate priority from them before detailed development and implementation
begin. This will improve quality, acceptance, timing, and lower costs due to waste and
rework. AHP is used extensively in ISO 16355 to obtain accurate priorities from
stakeholders.

The new ISO 16355 standard for QFD represents global best practice and its eight parts are
applicable to products, services, and information technology in both business-to-business and
business-to-consumer products. The eight parts of the standard that are now available at
https://www.iso.org/committee/585031/x/catalogue/ are:

— Part 1: General Principle and Perspective of QFD Method (ISO 16355-1:2015) [3]
— Part 2: Acquisition of Non-quantitative VOC or VOS (ISO 16355-2:2017) [4]
— Part 3: Acquisition of Quantitative VOC or VOS (ISO/NP 16355-3)
— Part 4: Analysis of Non-Quantitative and Quantitative VOC/VOS (ISO 16355-
4:2017) [5]
— Part 5: Solution Strategy (ISO 16355-5:2017) [6]
— Part 6: QFD-related approaches to optimization (ISO/NP 16355-6)
— Part 7: Other approaches to optimization (ISO/NP 16355-7)
— Part 8: Guidelines for commercialization and life cycle (ISO/TR 16355-8:2017). [7]

The use of AHP in ISO 16355 will be shown to demonstrate how multicriteria decision
making can help quality professionals lead others to make more informed, numbers-based,
group decisions. The ISO 16355 standard and clause are included.
2 Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

Prioritization using multicriteria decision making was advanced by the research of Dr.
Thomas Saaty in the 1960s at the U.S. Department of State Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency negotiating with the then Soviet Union. This proved useful in both intangible- and
tangible-based decisions. For intangible decisions, Saaty has found that:
1. It is possible to measure the intensity of feelings of human beings;
2. Both tangible and intangible factors can be used to select the best alternatives for both
physical and abstract choices;
3. Language alone is insufficient to synthesize across all aspects of a decision. Numbers
can be more helpful, especially in complex decisions. Inconsistencies in logic are
easier to track when numbers are used.
Saaty also found that decision makers facing a multitude of factors in a complex situation
innately organized them into groups sharing common properties, and then organized those
groups into higher level groups, and so on until a top element or goal was identified. This is
called a hierarchy and when making informed judgments to estimate importance, preference,
or likelihood, both tangible and intangible factors can be included and measured. [8]
For this reason, ISO 16355 recommends Saaty’s analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique
to manage this process in a manner that captures the intuitive language of the participants to
yield numerical results on a mathematically stable ratio scale. A numerical, ratio scale is
preferred for the following reasons:

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• Numerical priorities can be applied to later analyses to derive downstream priorities.

This will be important in guiding the developers and implementers of new solutions.

• Ratio scale priorities show precisely how much more important one issue is than
another. Ordinal scales only indicate rank order, but not the intensity of importance.

• Numerical scales can be tested for judgment inconsistency, sensitivity, and other
useful properties. As AHP does not require rational responses, an inconsistency check
will quantify and identify judgment inconsistencies by looking for instances where the
participant states a>b, b>c, but c>a, and so forth.
3 Fundamentals of AHP

The analytic hierarchy optimizes innate human skills in making judgments.

3.1 Judgment criteria that can be measured (ISO 16355-2:2017, 9.1.2.8.5)

Comparisons involve looking at two new stimuli or a single stimulus in light of information
from past experience. To make comparisons in a more scientific manner especially when the
stimuli or past information are complex and lack absolute measurements is made easier when
relative measurements can be established. Thus, there are three kinds of measurements that
can be useful.
1. Absolute measurements where the scale is known, such as distance, weight,
etc. These can either be bigger-the-better (such as performance) or smaller-the-
better (such as cost). These are useful for objective evaluations of objects that
can be counted on an absolute or interval scale.
2. Expert measurements based on information from past experience which is
widely shared by the participants in the decision making process. These are
useful for subjective evaluations of objects that are assigned a widely accepted
definition but cannot be counted. These evaluations use an ordinal scale.
3. Relative measurements based on comparing two stimuli at a time, in pairs. This
is useful when there is no countable or assigned scale, but a judgment of the
intensity of one object over another can be expressed.

3.2 Scales (ISO 16355-4:2017, 11)

A scale is a set of numbers, a set of objects, and assignment of the objects to the numbers.
There are four common scales used in judgments. These scales have certain mathematical
limitations.

1. Nominal scale, where a number is used to identify an object. For example, the
jersey number of a football player. The number identifies the player but does
not indicate any level of skill. It would not be meaningful to judge that player
#10 is twice as good as player #5, or to determine the winner of a match by
summing the jersey numbers of all the players on each team. One could,
however, judge that Team A had four players with a ten-series jersey number
and Team B had only three. While meaningful, such a judgment would hardly
be useful. Thus, nominal scale numbers may be used for a modal count
(frequency), but may not be summed, multiplied, or divided.
2. Ordinal scale, where a number designates increasing or decreasing order, but

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not information about the actual measurement. For example, if a group of

children were lined up according to height and assigned numbers with the
tallest being #1, the next tallest being #2, etc. it would be meaningful to say
that child #3 is taller than child #6, but it would not be meaningful to say he is
twice as tall (6/3). It would be meaningful to identify the child with the median
height, which means 50% of the other children are taller or shorter. Thus,
ordinal scale numbers can give order, median, and mode, but may not be
summed, multiplied, or divided.

There are two uses of ordinal scales: rank order and rating. Rank order is used
for the Olympic medals of gold, silver, and bronze. The gold medal winner is
better than the silver medal winner, but the medal itself does not tell how much
better because there is no defined interval between the medals. Ratings are
used to score an object by assigning a number from 1-10, for example. A score
of 8 dominates a score of 4, but it is not known if the intensity is twice as
much. Also, a score of 8 from one respondent may have a different intensity
than from another respondent. Both rank and rating have the same limitations
on mathematical calculations in that they can give order, median, and mode,
but may not be summed, multiplied, or divided

3. Interval scale, where numbers have a defined, accepted interval between them.
An example is temperature. The difference between 10° C and 20° C is the
same as between 20° C and 30° C. However, the difference between 10° C and
20° C and 10° F and 20° F is not the same because the scale is different.
Because interval scales are invariant under a linear transformation, a Celsius
reading can be converted into a Fahrenheit reading. It would, however, be
incorrect to say that 20° C is twice as hot as 10° C. Thus, summing,
multiplying, and dividing interval scales do not yield meaningful results. With
temperatures, averaging is meaningful.
4. Ratio scale, where the ratio of weights of two objects is the same, regardless of
the scale of measurement. Ratio scales are useful for comparing objects
measured on different scales, by converting the different scales into ratios.
5. Absolute scale, where the numbers have a defined value and are in ratio to each
other. Absolute scale numbers can be counted, include the real numbers
commonly used to solve equations, have an origin (zero point), and can be
summed, multiplied, and divided. For example, weight, height, distance, and
money are on an absolute scale.

3.3 Levels of judgment (ISO 16355-2:2017, 9.2.3 b)

Psychologists has found that the human brain can represent the meaning of numbers 1-9 with
actual acuity. [7] Saaty likens this to the mental process of grouping objects into high,
medium, and low, and then each of these into high, medium, and low. When comparing two
objects, it is reasonable that people can assign one of nine levels to distinguish a small amount
of difference between two objects. In AHP, verbal equivalents for 1-9 are used; they are equal
(1), moderate (3), strong (5), very strong (7), and extreme (9). Intermediate values may be
used such as between equal and moderate (2), etc.

3.4 Pairwise comparisons (ISO 16355-2:2017, 9.1.2.8.6 Example 3)

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When making subjective judgments, human stimuli and response to “noticeable differences”
is quite good when comparing two objects at a time. [8] In AHP, a comparison matrix is
created to record the dominance of one object over the other in the pair, using a number from
1-9 or its verbal equivalent. The comparison matrix records the inverse value where the row
and column of the same pair are switched. To calculate the priories of the objects, the
principal eigenvector of the comparison matrix is calculated by normalizing the matrix,
summing and then averaging normalized rows. This is shown in Table 3, Table 4, and Table 5
below.

3.5 Judgment consistency (ISO 16355-2:2017, 9.1.2.8.6 NOTE)

Human decisions may exhibit inconsistencies. One might judge that a=2b, b=2c, a=3c.
However, if a is twice b, and b is twice c, then consistency would dictate that a should be four
times c, not 3 times. This inconsistency can be tracked in AHP by creating a comparison
matrix that shows a dominating c directly and a dominating c indirectly by a dominating b
and b dominating c, and so forth. The issue of dominance is best addressed by calculating the
principal eigenvector of the comparison matrix. An inconsistency ratio can calculated and if
above 10 % should be checked for math or judgment errors. The calculation of the
inconsistency ratio is beyond the scope of this paper.

3.6 Criteria (ISO 16355-2:2017, 9.1.2.8.5)

The most common evaluation criteria are of two types: objective or subjective. With AHP,
both can be combined in one evaluation model by converting the evaluations into ratio scale
numbers.

1. a) Objective criteria can be counted or estimated with some degree of confidence and
the values are usually on an absolute scale. There are two types of objective
criteria: bigger-the-better and smaller-the-better. An example of bigger-the-better
is sales revenue where €1,000,000 is twice as good as €500,000. An example is
shown in Table 1.

b) An example of smaller-the-better is number of full time equivalent (FTE) staff

required for a project where 5 FTEs is twice as good as 10 FTEs. Objective criteria
can be converted to ratio scale by first inverting and then converting to a
percentage. An example is shown in Table 2.

2. c) Subjective criteria are more experiential or heuristic. There are two types of
subjective criteria: expert and relative. An example of an expert criterion is
Michelin stars for a restaurant. The Michelin scale is widely used and accepted.
Since the expert scale is ordinal, a three-star restaurant cannot be said to be three
times better than a one-star restaurant. An expert criterion can be converted to ratio
scale by pairwise comparisons of the evaluation levels. An example is shown in
Table 3.

d) A relative criteria is useful when there is no absolute or ordinal scale to

evaluate. An example is the fun of working on a project; one can say that one
project would be more fun than another but there is no widely accepted way to
measure "fun." A relative criterion can be converted to ratio scale by pairwise
comparison of the alternatives. An example is shown in Table 4.

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4 Using AHP for Prioritizing and Selecting Alternatives in ISO 16355 and QFD

AHP is used in ISO 16355 in many places where precise prioritization or selection of
alternatives is required. Among these are:

1. Prioritizing projects (ISO 16355-2:2017, 9.1.2.8)

2. Prioritizing business goals (ISO 16355-2:2017, 9.1.3.3)
3. Prioritizing stakeholders and customers (ISO 16355-2:2017, 9.2.3)
4. Customer satisfaction surveys (ISO/TR 16355-8:2017, 17.1)
5. Prioritizing customer needs (ISO 16355-4:2017, 11.2)
6. Benchmarking customer perceptions of competitors (ISO 16355-4:2017, 12.2)
7. Transfering customer need weights into functional requirement weights in
House of Quality and all other QFD matrices for technology, cost, reliability,
and other analyses (ISO 16355-5:2017, 10.2)
8. Benchmarking technical performance of competitors (ISO 16355-5:2017,
10.3.4.5)
9. Technology or concept selection (ISO 16355-5:2017, 10.4.3.7.2.3)
10. Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) risk priority number calculation
(ISO/TR 16355-8:2017, 9.8.2 and 13.4)
11. Make or buy decision, vendor selection (ISO/TR 16355-8:2017, 12.4).

5 Prioritizing projects

As shown in Figure 1, selecting which projects to fund now and which to delay requires
managers to balance many factors. The AHP alternative selection process shown in Figure 2
can improve the buy-in of the various decision makers, improve the accuracy of the decision,
and save time in reaching a decision.

Figure 1 Project selection factors to balance

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Figure 2 AHP alternative selection process

5.3 Structure the model

The first step is to identify the criteria and the alternatives to be evaluated. If the criteria are
already known, such as revenue potential, sales volume, return on investment (ROI), etc. they
can be grouped into a hierarchy where similar criteria are "leaves" on the same "branch." For
example, high level branches might be financial, marketing, technology, each with sub-
criteria leaves such as revenue, sales, ROI sub-criteria under financial; market size, channel
strength, # competitors sub-criteria under marketing; and technology readiness, time-to-
market, manufacturing capability sub-criteria under technology as shown in Figure 3. If the
criteria are not known, but the alternatives are, each alternative can be examined for strengths
and weaknesses which can be simplfied into criteria. For example, if project Alpha can be
made with existing equipment, this could be simplified into the criterion "capital investment."
If project Bravo has poor brand acceptance, this could be simplified into the positive criterion
of "ease of market entry." If the project alternatives are not known, they can be proposed
based on known criteria. For example, a criterion of "grow market share" might generate
project alternatives of "extend product line variations," "identify new market territories," etc.

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Figure 3 Hierarchy of criteria

5.4 Measure

Prioritize the criteria and rate each alternative against each criteria, or first rate the alternatives
and then prioritize the criteria. Prioritizing the criteria first has the advantage that if the
process takes too long, alternatives can be rated against the high priority criteria first, and
lower criteria can be used only if a tie-breaker is needed. The disadvantage is that if the
criteria priorities are known, a few participants in the process could try to bias the results.
Note that the inconsistency ratio desribed in 3.5 above will reveal this bias. Rating the
alternatives first has the advantage of minimizing the bias, but the disadvantage of much time
being spent discussing and evaluating the alternatives against criteria that have minimal
impact on the decision. Rating alternatives first will be the sequence shown here.

Table 1 is an example of an objective criteria, where a larger value is better — in this case,
projected first-year revenue in million euros. Each project is evaluated: project alpha is
estimated to produce €100 million, project bravo is estimated to produce €60 million, and so
forth. These scores are converted into ratio scale by summing the estimated values and
dividing each value by the sum. 100 + 60 + 120 + 80 = 360. 100/360 = 0.278 and so forth.
These mathematical calculations are permitted because revenues in euros are on an absolute
scale.

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Table 1 Rating alternatives against a bigger-the-better criterion

revenue (projected first-year revenue, in millions totals

estimated value 100 60 120 80 360
normalized 0.278 0.167 0.333 0.222 1.000

Table 2 is an example of an objective criteria, where a smaller value is better — in this case,
the number of research fellows needed on the project. Each project is evaluated: project Alpha
is estimated to require 10 research fellows, project Bravo is estimated to require 12 research
fellows, and so forth. These scores are converted into ratio scale by first inverting the values
(since smaller is better) and then summing the inverse values. Then, each inversed value is
divided by the sum. 1/10 = 0.100, 1/12 = 0.083, and so forth. 0.100 + 0.083 + 0.091 + 0.071 =
0.346. 0.100/0.346 = 0.289 and so forth.

Table 2 Rating alternatives against a smaller-the-better criterion

minds (number of Research Fellows needed) totals

estimated value 10 12 11 14 47
the inverse 0.100 0.083 0.091 0.071 0.346
normalized 0.289 0.241 0.263 0.207 1.000

Table 3 is an example of a subjective criteriaon on an ordinal expert scale — in this case, the
degree of technical risk of each project. Before evaluating each project, the expert scale can
be converted from ordinal to ratio scale. In this example, three ordinal scales are presented:
iconic (lightning arrows representing danger), numerical (1 to 5 with 1 being the safest), and
verbal (from safe to foolhardy). Using AHP's pairwise comparison matrix, each ordinal scale
value is compared with all the others. When two values are equal, a 1 is entered in the matrix;
thus, the diagonals are always 1s. When the row is preferred to the column, an integer is
entered in the matrix to represent the strength of the preference. The choice of strengths and
their integers are equal (1), moderately preferred (3), strongly preferred (5), very strongly
preferred (7), or extremely preferred (9). In this example, safe is moderately preferred to some
risk, safe is strongly preferred to risky, and so forth. When the column is preferred, the
inverse fraction is entered. Thus, the lower left values are inverse of the upper right.

Each column in the ratio scale conversion grid is summed (safe is 1 + 1/3 + 1/5 + 1/7 + 1/9 =
1.79) and then normalized by dividing each value by the column total. 1/1.79 = 0.560,
1/3/1.79 = 0.187, and so forth. The normalized columns sum to 1.000. Then, each row of
normalized columns are summed (0.560 + 0.642 + 0.524 + 0.429 + 0.360 = 2.514). The row
totals are then averaged to yield the ratio scale values of the ordinal scale (2.514/5 = 0.503
and so forth).

Once the ordinal scale has been converted into ratio scale, each project should be evaluated.
In this example, project Alpha has some risk and is scored two arrows, Project Bravo is
judged foolhardy and has earned five arrows, etc. Substituting the ratio scale row averages
from the conversion grid, five arrows has a weight of 0.035, four arrows has a weight of
0.068, and three arrows has a weight of 0.134, and so forth. These are summed (0.26 + 0.035
+ 0.134 + 0.068 = 0.4969) and normalized (0.26/0.4969 = 0.0523 and so forth).

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Table 3 Rating alternatives against an expert judgment criterion

Table 4 is an example of a subjective criteria, where there is no expert scale and so a relative
judgment scale is used — in this case, the potential enjoyment of crushing the competition for
each project. Similar to the ratio scale conversion matrix in Table 3, each project is pairwise
compared to each other project relative to its enjoyment or fun. Projects compared to
themselves earn a score of 1 as shown in the diagonal of the matrix. When the row project is
preferred to the column, an integer is entered in the matrix to represent the strength of the
preference. The choice of strengths and their integers are equal (1), moderately preferred (3),
strongly preferred (5), very strongly preferred (7), or extremely preferred (9). When the
column is preferred, the inverse fraction is entered. Thus, the lower left values are inverse of
the upper right. In this example, project Bravo is moderately preferred to project Alpha,
project Charlie is strongly preferred to project Alpha, and so forth.

The scoring matrix is then normalized as above, with the row average results indicating the
relative score for each project. In the example, project Alpha has a relative “fun” score of
0.133, Bravo of 0.268, and so forth.

Table 4 Rating alternatives against a relative judgment criterion

(competitor crushing enjoyment potential) row row
fun Alpha Bravo Charli Delta normalized columns total avg.
Alpha 1 1/3 1/5 5 0.109 0.074 0.122 0.227 0.532 0.133
Bravo 3/1 1 1/3 7 0.326 0.223 0.203 0.318 1.070 0.268
Charlie 5/1 3/1 1 9 0.543 0.670 0.608 0.409 2.231 0.558
Delta 1/5 1/7 1/9 1 0.022 0.032 0.068 0.045 0.167 0.042
9.20 4.48 1.64 22.00 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 4.000 1.000

After the alternatives are rated, the next step is to prioritze the judgment criteria, since not all
criteria are equally important in project selection. For example, a company can evaluate
revenue as being more important than market share. This evaluation allows the project
selection process to more precisely reflect the strategy of the organization. Table 5 uses the
AHP pairwise matrix to weight the project selection criteria against themselves. Similar to the
ratio scale conversion matrix in Table 3, each criteria is pairwise compared to each other
criteria relative to the importance of the criterion to the strategy. Criteria compared to
themselves earn a score of 1 as shown in the diagonal of the grid. When the row criteria are
more important than the column, an integer is entered in the grid to represent the strength of
the importance. The choice of strengths and their integers are equally important (1),

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moderately more important (3), strongly more important (5), very strongly more important
(7), or extremely more important (9). In this example, revenue is moderately more important
than the number of minds, and so forth. When the column is preferred, the inverse fraction is
entered. Thus, the lower left values are inverse of the upper right. The relative importance of
the criteria are revenue (0.558), # minds (0.263), technical risk (0.122), and fun (0.057).

Table 5 Prioritizing the judgment criteria

(importance of criteria to strategy selection) row row
criteria revenu minds risk fun normalized columns total avg.
revenue 1 3 5 7 0.597 0.662 0.536 0.438 2.232 0.558
minds 1/3 1 3 5 0.199 0.221 0.321 0.313 1.053 0.263
risk 1/5 1/3 1 3 0.119 0.074 0.107 0.188 0.487 0.122
fun 1/7 1/5 1/3 1 0.085 0.044 0.036 0.063 0.228 0.057

5.5 Synthesize

The weighted criteria are then multiplied by the ratio scale values of each project to calculate
project priorities. In the center of the synthesis grid in Table 6, the previous work is displayed.
For example, the revenue estimate for project alpha was €100 million, which was normalized
to a ratio scale score of 0.278 in Table 1. Here, it is represented as 27.8 %. This score is then
multiplied by the criteria weight for revenue (0.558 or 55.8 %) giving what is called a
“global” weight of 15.5 %. This is repeated for each cell in the grid, and the global weights
are then summed for each column to give a project selection weight in ratio scale. Here,
project Charlie (32.0 %) has almost twice the priority as project Bravo (18.0 %). Thus,
depending on the available resources, project Charlie would be selected as the project likely
to deliver the most value to the organization.

5.6 Optimize

There may be other constraints such as staff availability or cost-benefit analyses that modify
the selection. It may also be determined that while project Charlie is the best selection for a
single project, the same resources might be able to complete both projects Alpha and Bravo,
thus yielding better results to the organization. By having a rational and precise decision
making process, the participants can be more confident in their judgments.

6 Conclusion

Quality professionals will find the ISO 16355's AHP process for multicriteria decision making
easy to lead using their mathematical, quantitative and qualitative problem solving skills. This
will be useful when the decisions are quality related, such as in QFD, Design for Six Sigma,
and Lean, or when they are asked to facilitate other functions in the organization such as
marketing, C-suite decisions, and others. While the above examples were easily done in a
spreadsheet, there are a number of dedicated software apps that can make the process easier to
set up and adapt on-the-fly.

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Table 6 Synthesizing project priorities

project/concepts

PC3 Charlie
PC1 Alpha

PC2 Bravo

PC4 Delta
criteria % wt.
100 60 120 80 ∑ count or estimate
27.8 16.7 33.3 22.2 ∑ local priorities (%)
revenue 55.8% 15.5 9.3 18.6 12.4 ∑ global priorities (%)
10 12 11 14
28.9 24.1 26.3 20.7
minds 26.3% 7.6 6.3 6.9 5.4
2 5 3 4
52.3 7.0 27.0 13.6
risk 12.2% 6.4 0.9 3.3 1.7

13.3 26.8 55.8 4.2

fun 5.7% 0.8 1.5 3.2 0.2

% 30.2 18.0 32.0 19.7 priorities

Author Biography
Glenn H. Mazur has been active in QFD since its inception in North America, and has worked
extensively with the founders of QFD on their teaching and consulting visits from Japan. He
is a leader in the application of QFD as well as conducting advanced QFD research, and is the
Conference Chair for the North American Symposium on Quality Function Deployment.
Glenn is the Executive Director of the QFD Institute and International Council for QFD,
retired Adjunct Lecturer on TQM at the University of Michigan College of Engineering, and
is a senior member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), and the Japanese Society for
Quality Control (JSQC). He is a certified QFD Red Belt® (highest level), one of two in North
America. He is a certified QFD-Architekt #A21907 by QFD Institut Deutschland. He is
honorary president of the Hong Kong QFD Association and Asia QFD Association. He is
convenor of the ISO Working Group writing the ISO 16355 for QFD, a member of the
Technical Committee 176 responsible for ISO 9000 series standards, and a member of
Technical Committee 279 writing the standard for Innovation Management. He is an
Academician and Secretary-Treasurer of the International Academy for Quality.
glenn@mazur.net

Bibliography

[1] W. E. Deming, The New Economics, Cambridge, MA: MIT-Center for Advanced
Educational Services, 1994, p. 163.
[2] ISO 16355-1:2015, „Applications of statistical and related methods to new technology
and product development process - Part 1: General principles and perspectives of Quality

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Function Deployment (QFD),“ International Standards Organization, Geneva,

Switzerland, 2015.
[3] ISO 16355-2:2017, „Applications of statistical and related methods to new technology
and product development process - Part 2: Acquisition of Non-quantitative Voice of
Customer and Voice of Stakeholder,“ International Standards Organization, Geneva,
Switzerland, 2017.
[4] ISO 16355-4:2017, „Applications of statistical and related methods to new technology
and product development process - Part 4: Analysis of Non-Quantitative and Quantitative
VOC/VOS,“ International Standards Organization, Geneva Switzerland, 2017.
[5] ISO 16355-5:2017, „Applications of statistical and related methods to new technology
and product development process - Part 5: Solution Strategy,“ International Standards
Organization, Geneva Switzerland, 2017.
[6] ISO/TR 16355-8:2017, „Applications of statistical and related methods to new technology
and product development process - Part 8 Commercialization.,“ International Standards
Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, 2017.
[7] T. L. Saaty, „The Analytic Hierarchy Process: How to Measure Intangibles in a
Meaningful Way Side by Side,“ Ann Arbor, 2007.

© Glenn H. Mazur 13