Quality Function Deployment

Quality function deployment -A powerful tool for establishing technical design requirements that meet customer needs and deploying them in subsequent production activities is quality function deployment (QFD). The term, which is a translation of the Japanese Kanji characters used to describe the process, can sound confusing. QFD is simply a planning process to guide the design, manufacturing, and marketing of goods by integrating the voice of the customer throughout the organization.

 QFD helps in making every design, manufacturing, and control decision to meet the expressed needs of customers. QFD benefits companies through improved communication and teamwork between all constituencies in the value chain, such as between marketing and design, between design and manufacturing, and between manufacturing and quality control.

Under QFD, all operations of a company are driven by the voice of the customer, rather than by edicts of top management or the opinions or desires of design engineers. QFD departs from the traditional product planning process in which product concepts are originated by design teams or research and development groups, tested and refined, produced, and marketed. Often, a considerable amount of wasted effort and time is spent redesigning products and production systems until customer needs are met. If customer needs can be identified properly in the first place, then such wasteful effort is eliminated, which is the principal focus of QFD.

Product objectives are better understood and interpreted during the production process because all key design information is captured and synthesized. This approach helps to understand trade-offs in design, and promote consensus among managers. Use of QFD focuses on the drivers of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction, making it a useful tool for competitive analysis of product quality by top management. Productivity as well as quality improvements generally result. Perhaps most significant, though, QFD reduces the time for new product development. QFD allows companies to simulate the effects of new design ideas and concepts. Through this benefit, companies can reduce product development time and bring new products into the market sooner, thus gaining competitive advantage.

QFD uses a set of linked matrixes to ensure that the voice of the customer is carried throughout the production/delivery process. Because of the visual structure, these are called “houses of quality.” The first house of quality relates the voice of the customer (customer requirements) to a product’s overall technical requirements; the second relates technical requirements to component requirements; the third relates component requirements to process operations; and the final one relates process operations to quality control plans. In this fashion, every design and production decision, including the design of production processes and the choice of quality measurements, is traceable to the voice of the customer. If applied correctly, this process ensures that the resulting product meets customer needs.