QFD provides the essential link between customer requirements and the available technology required for developing optimized products and services that best suit customer needs and expectations. By using QFD, businesses can now easily make use of existing technology - or even use a completely new technology - for designing and developing products or services without worrying about the negative fallout that is commonly associated with undertaking technology development and product development initiatives, both at the same time.
QFD has made it easier for businesses to make the benefits of newer technology available to their customers through improvements made in the existing product or service.
Importance Of QFD
QFD is important because it offers multiple benefits such as better conceptualization and implementation, increased production efficiency, and increased customer satisfaction. At the conceptualization stage, the main worry of product designers is whether the available technology can be successfully used or not for satisfying customer needs and expectations. It may look good on paper, but problems may start to surface when actual production starts if proper analysis is not done at the conceptualization stage regarding the compatibility of the available technology with the suggested manufacturing processes.
QFD helps because it effectively maps the complete production cycle, indicating exactly when and where to use the available technology to get the desired results. QFD also points out possible problems that may arise in the near future, which in turn helps managers to devise innovative solutions or backup plans well in advance. This not only helps businesses to satisfy customer needs and expectations through optimized products or services, but also helps them to reduce costs though increased production efficiency.
When To Use QFD
QFD is most effective when it is implemented in the early stages of the design phase. The early stages of the design phase is the time when new features are being incorporated based on customer requirements, making it necessary to implement QFD so as to resolve any critical issues before they transform into major problems and become a threat to the project itself. Implementing QFD after the design phase may not help much, because by then it will be very difficult and costly for the business to revert back to another product design if it has been found that the existing product design does not confirm to customer needs and expectations due to faults in the conceptualization stage.
To derive maximum benefits from QFD, businesses should make it a point to undertake proper analysis of all the related aspects and make the information available to all employees associated with the project. For ensuring the success of QFD initiatives, it is also necessary for businesses to manage the operations through a multidisciplinary team, comprising of members from all functional departments within the organization. This is necessary because no matter how good a plan is, there will always be the need for expert advice and suggestions for solving day-to-day problems that are likely to occur during the course of the project implementation.
A useful and structured tool that helps to understand the requirements of the customers and translate them into business deliverables is the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) tool.
The QFD tool focuses on the positive qualities that lead to customer delight. It finds objects that may delight the customer and improves upon them. QFD is useful when the business is aware of the customer's requirements, but is unable to have internal measurements comparative to the requirements.
It is useful when a large investment is needed for a new product. When there is no agreement on delivering customer requirements and there is stiff competition in the market segment, QFD can be of great assistance.
How Does QFD Work?
The basic idea of QFD is to create a link between the attributes that the customers voice and design them based on parameters from which the specific contributing actions and responsibilities of functions can be identified. The structure is organized and is often termed as the House of Quality. It is useful when there is involvement of cross-functional teams.
The structure of House of Quality is built in four steps:
First house of quality - Customer's House
The first house is the customer's house. In this house, the goal is to transform the voice of the customer into simple, clear language. Companies have to understand the metrics on which the customer decides whether their requirements are met, and then develop its internal metrics that determine customer requirements.
The key elements of the first house are customers' needs, measurable characteristics of the needs, relationship in between the needs and the characters measured in high, medium or low, comparison with competitors, competitive benchmarking and preliminary targets meeting the customer's requirements.
Once these elements are identified, a relationship to the measurable customer's needs and their strengths are determined. Finally, the analysis to establish the improvements is done.
Second House Of Quality - Company's House
The second house is the company's house. The goal of this house is to decide on the actions that are to be taken to satisfy customer needs. This house is generally constructed in the measure and analyze phase.
Third House of Quality - Process House
This house is the house of the process and constructed in the analyze phase. An analysis is done to find which processes should be implemented to meet the customer's requirements.
A new process may even be developed if the need is felt.
Fourth House of Quality - Process Control House
This is the house of process control and constructed in the control phase. Its aim is to find the control variables used to satisfy customer needs.
It may not be necessary to construct all four houses of QFD. It should be used to meet customer requirements from the development stage to the delivery stage and it should agree on the measurement systems and performance specifications to improve the company's strategic competitiveness.
By including the steps to improve on both spoken and unspoken requirements, it helps gain a competitive advantage.
Tony Jacowski has sinced written about articles on various topics from University, Six Sigma and Information Technology. Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online and certification classes for lean six sigm. Tony Jacowski's top article generates over 90500 views. to your Favourites.