Quality Function Deployment
Chatchada Akarasriworn
Tammy Davis
Kelsey Poland
Jing Shao
Introduction
Quality function deployment (QFD) is a planning tool used to
fulfill customer expectations. It is a disciplined approach to
product design, engineering, and production and provides indepth evaluation of a product.
QFD focuses on customer expectations or requirements, often
referred to as the voice of the customer.
It is employed to translate customer expectations, in terms of
engineering or technical characteristics, that can deployed
through:





Product planning
Part development
Process planning
Production planning
Service industries
The QFD Team
When an organization decides to implement
QFD, the project manager and team
members need to be able to commit a
significant amount of time to it, especially in
the early stages.
There are two types of teams:


Designing a new product
Improving an existing product
Time and inter-team communication are two
very important things that each team must
use to their fullest potential.
The QFD Team cont.
Team meetings are very important in
the QFD process.


The team leader needs to ensure that the
meetings are run in the most efficient
manner and that the members are kept
informed.
Duration of the meeting will rely on where
the team’s members are coming from and
what needs to be accomplished.
Benefits of QFD
•
Improves Customer Satisfaction
Creates focus on customer requirements
 Uses competitive information effectively
 Prioritizes resources
 Identifies items that can be acted upon
 Structures resident experience/information

 Reduces Implementation Time
Decreases midstream design changes
 Limits post introduction problems
 Avoids future application opportunities
 Surfaces missing assumptions

Benefits of QFD
•
Promotes Teamwork
Based on consensus
 Creates communication at interfaces
 Identifies actions at interfaces
 Creates global view out of details

 Provides Documentation
Documents rationale for design
 Is easy to assimilate
 Adds structure to the information
 Adapts to changes (a living document)
 Provides framework for sensitivity analysis

The Customer Voice
Organization of Information
Now that the customer expectations
and needs have been identified and
researched, the QFD team needs to
process the information.
Methods include:




Affinity diagrams
Interrelationship diagrams
Tree diagrams
Cause-and-effect diagrams
Organization of Information cont.
An Affinity Diagram should be used when:



Thoughts are too widely dispersed or numerous
to organize.
New solutions are needed to circumvent the
more traditional ways of problems solving.
Support for a solution is essential for successful
implementation.
Constructing an affinity diagram requires
four simple steps:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Phrase the objective.
Record all responses
Group the responses
Organize groups in an affinity diagram
House of Quality
Interrelationship
Between
Technical descriptors
Left wall – Voice of customer,
what customer expects
Right wall – Prioritized
customer requirement
Relationship between
requirements and descriptors
Prioritized customer
requirements
Customer requirements
(voice of the customer)
Technical descriptors
(voice of the organization)
Ceiling - Technical
descriptors
Interior walls – Relationship
between requirements and
descriptors
Roof - Interrelationship
between descriptors
Foundation – Prioritized
technical descriptors
Prioritized technical
descriptors
Building House of Quality
Building House of Quality
Step 1 List customer
requirements (WHATs)

Customers’ needs or
expectations
 Primary
 Secondary
Building House of Quality
Step 2 List technical
descriptors (HOWs)
 Counterpart
characteristics
 Primary
 Secondary
 Tertiary
Building House of Quality
Step 3 Develop a
relationship matrix
between WHATs and
Hows

Structuring an LShaped Diagram
 Easy
 Not require experience
Building House of Quality
Step 3 Contd.

Relationship matrix
 Degree of influence
between each
technical descriptor
and each customer
requirement
● Strong relationship=9
○ Medium relationship=3
∆ Weak relationship=1
Blank No relationship
Step 4
Building a House of Quality
Develop an Interrelationship Matrix
Between HOWs
+9
Used to:
Strong positive
+3
Positive
-3
X Negative
Technical descriptors (HOWs)
Sand casting
Manufacturing
Process
Die Casting
Material
Selection
Welding
Strong Negative
Aluminum
-9
identify any
interrelationship
between each of
the technical
descriptors
(support or
conflict?)
Step 5
Building a House of Quality
Competitive Assessments
Customer assessment
1.
Corresponding to each customer requirement
2.
Rating from 1 (worst) to 5 (best)
3.
Used to
a) determine if the customer’s requirements have been met.
b) identify areas to concentrate on in the next design
c) Where an organization stands relative to its major competitors
Technical assessment
1.
Corresponding to each technical descriptor
2.
Rating from 1 (worst) to 5 (best)
3.
Used to uncover gaps in engineering judgment.
Step 6
Building a House of Quality
Develop Prioritized Customer
Requirements
1.
Importance to the customer: rating from 1 (least important) to
10 (very important)
2.
Target value: rating from 1 (worst) to 5 (best)
3.
Scale-up factor: ratio of the target value to the product rating
given in the customer competitive assessment
4.
Sales point: 1.0 (lowest) - 2.0 (highest)
5.
Absolute weight = 1 X 3X 4
A percent and rank for each customer requirement can be
determined.
Step 7
Building a House of Quality
Develop Prioritized Technical
Descriptors
1.
Degree of difficulty: rating from 1 (least difficult) to 10 ( very
difficult).
2.
Target value: rating from 1 (worst) to 5 (best), same way as
determining target value of customer requirement.
3.
Absolute weight : aj= ∑Rijci
4.
Relative weight: bj= ∑Rijdi
http://www.qfdi.org
5
Customer
competitive
assessment
Importance to the
customer
3
2
2
QFD Process
QFD Matrix (House of Quality)

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Basis for all future matrices
Must refine technical descriptors further
More than one matrix often needed
Accomplishing QFD Process
HOWs of previous chart become WHATs of
new chart

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Technical descriptors = HOWs; WHATs = customer
requirements
Continue until each objective is refined to
actionable level
HOW MUCH carried to next chart to aid
communication


Prioritized technical descriptors
Ensures target values aren’t lost
Refinement of QFD Chart
Complete QFD Process
Can be shown using
Flow Diagram
1st Chart—Product
Planning
2nd Chart—Part
Development
3rd Chart—Process
Planning
4th Chart—Production
Planning
Other House of Quality Planning
Charts
Depends on type of product and scope
of project
Demanded quality chart
Quality control process chart
Reliability deployment chart
Technology deployment chart
Examples
Universities


Design course content & curriculum
Support services
Business and Defense Organizations

Budgeting
Designing training modules
Conclusion
QFD


Effective management tool
Customer expectations are used to drive
design process or to drive improvement in
service industries
Advantages & Benefits
Orderly way of obtaining information &
presenting it
Shorter product development cycle
Considerably reduced start-up costs
Fewer engineering changes
Reduced chance of oversights during design
process
Environment of teamwork
Consensus decisions
Everything is preserved in writing
Everyone Benefits
Entire organization constantly aware of
customer requirements
Marketing—specific sales points have
been identified and can be stressed
Results in satisfied customers!
Questions


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What are some advantages of QFD?
What methods could be used to
determine the voice of the customer?
What are the keys to success when
building a House of Quality?
Who is responsible for building the
House of Quality?
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Questions
If you are Pizza Hut and you are
building a House of Quality, what
customer requirements should you
consider?
What are some of the primary technical
descriptors that should be considered?