QUALITY FUNCTION

DEPLOYMENT
LISTEN VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER

First application of QFD was at Mitsubishi, Japan,

in 1972 by Dr. Mizuno.
In production of mini-vans by Toyota:
Reduction startup costs
1997-October 1979-November 1982- April 1984
%20 %38 %61
First implementation in US in 1984 by Xerox
QFD
QFD is a planning tool used to fulfill customer
expectations. It can be applied to manufacturing and
service industries.
QFD can improve organization’s engineering
knowledge, productivity, and quality and reduce costs,
product development time, and engineering changes.
Customer expectations  directions and actions
(specific requirements) (engineering or tech. char.)
Deployed through
Product planningPart development Process
planningproduction planningservice industries
QFD TEAM
Types of teams
Designing a new product
Improving an existing product

Teams include members from marketing,

design, quality, finance, and production

Time and inter-team communication

BENEFITS OF QFD
VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER
Sources:
Focus groups, surveys, complaints, consultants, standards, and
federal regulations

QFD team analyzes customer expectations into more specific

customer requirements

Questions:
What does the customer really want?
What are the customer’s expectations?
Are the customer’s expectations used to drive the design process?
What can the design team do to achieve customer satisfaction?
ORGANIZATOIN OF
INFORMATION
Methods to process the information
Affinity diagrams, interrelationship diagrams, tree diagrams,
and cause-and-effect diagrams
Affinity Diagram
Thoughts are too widely dispersed or numerous to organize
New solutions are needed to circumvent the more traditional
ways of problem solving
Support for a solution is essential for successful
implementation
Steps of constructing an affinity diagram
Phrase the objective Record all responses Group the
responses Organize groups in an affinity diagram
HOUSE OF QUALITY
The goal of
the house of
quality is to
design or
change the
design of a
product in a
way that
meets or
exceeds the
customer
expectations
BUILDING
A HOUSE
OF
QUALITY
A HOUSE OF QUALITY
Step 1- List Customer Requirements (WHATs)
PrimarySecondaryTertiary

Step 2-List of Technical Descriptors (HOWs)

QFD team defines the engineering characteristics
or technical descriptors which will effect one or
more of the customer requirements
An expression of the voice of the customer in
technical language
PrimarySecondaryTertiary
A HOUSE OF QUALITY
Step 3-Develop a Relationship Matrix Betwen WHATs
and HOWs
By structuring an L-shaped diagram, confusion of
determining the relationship between customer
requirements and technical descriptors can be reduced.
Relationship matrix represents graphically degree of
influence between each technical descriptor and each
customer requirement
A solid circle = strong relationship ●=9
A single circle = medium relationship ⃝=3
A triangle = weak relationship =1
Blank box= no relationship
A HOUSE OF QUALITY
Step 4-Develop an Interrelationship Matrix
Between HOWs
Correlation matrix identifies any
interrelationships between each of technical
descriptors

A solid circle = strong positive relationship ●=9

A circle = positive relationship ⃝=3
An X = negative relationship X=-3
An asterisk = strong negative relationship *=-9
A HOUSE OF QUALITY
Step 5-Competitive Assessments
A pair of weighted tables shows comparison between
competitive products and current organization
products.

Customer competitive assessment

Defines organization stands in competition
Determines areas to focus on in the next design
5 for best, 1 for worst
Technical competitive assessment
useful in uncovering gaps in engineering judgment
5 for best, 1 for worst
A HOUSE OF QUALITY
Step 6-Develop Prioritized Customer Requirements
Importance to customer
QFD team ranks customer requirements by assigning
it a rating.
1 for least important, 10 for very important

Target value
QFD team decides to achieve goal
1 for worst, 5 for best

Scale-up factor
A ratio of the target value to the product rating given
in the customer competitive assessment (TV/CCA)
A HOUSE OF QUALITY
Step 6-Develop Prioritized Customer
Requirements (Cont.)

Sales point
Tells the QFD team how well a customer
requirement will sell.
1.0 for lowest, 2.0 for highest

Absolute weight
AW=(importance to customer) x (scale-up factor) x
(sales point)
AW is a guide for the planning phase of the product
development.
A HOUSE OF QUALITY
Step7-Developed Prioritized Technical
Descriptors
They are needed to fulfill customer requirements and
need improvement

Degree of difficulty
Evaluate the ability to implement certain quality
improvements

Target value
Defines to achieve technical descriptor
 A HOUSE OF QUALITY
Step7-Developed Prioritized Technical Descriptors
(Cont.)

Absolute weight
Determines the weights by assigning numerical values
to symbols in the relationship matrix
n
a j   Rij ci
i 1

a j  row vector of absolute weights for the technical descriptors (i  1,...m)

Rij  weihts assigned to the relationship matrix (i  1,...n, j  1,...m)
ci  column vector of importance to customer for the customer requirements (i  1,...n)
m  number of technical descriptors
n  number of customer requirements
 A HOUSE OF QUALITY
Step7-Developed Prioritized Technical Descriptors
(Cont.)
Relative weight
n
b j   Rij d i
i 1

b  row vector of relative weights for the technical descriptors ( j  1,..., m)

d i  column vector of absolute weights for the customer requirements (i  1,..., n)

Higher absolute and relative ratings identify areas where

engineering efforts need to be concentrated.
These weights show the impact of the technical characteristics
on the customer requirements. They can be organized into a
Pareto diagram to show which technical characteristics are
important in meeting customer requirements
QFD PROCESS
EXAMPLES
Rainstar University
QFD is used for meeting customer and
accreditation needs

Tennessee Technological University’

College of Business Administration
QFD is used for redesign their internal
resources center
CONCLUSION
Advantages and benefits of implementing QFD
An orderly way of obtaining information and
presenting it
Shorter product development cycle
Considerably reduced start-up costs
Fewer engineering changes
Reduced chance of oversights during the design
process
An environment of teamwork
Consensus decisions
Everything is preserved in writing