Introduction Quality must be designed into the product, not inspected into it. Quality can be defined as meeting customer needs and providing superior value.
Step 1: Customer Requirements - 'Voice of the Customer'. The first step in a QFD project is to determine what market segments will be analyzed during the process and to identify who the customers are. The team then gathers information from customers on the requirements they have for the product or service.
This focus on satisfying the customer’s needs places an emphasis on techniques such as Quality Function Deployment to help understand those needs and plan a product to provide superior value. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a structured approach to defining customer needs or requirements and translating them into specific plans to produce products to meet those needs.
The “voice of the customer” is the term to describe these stated and unstated customer needs or requirements. The voice of the customer is captured in a variety of ways: direct discussion or interviews, surveys, focus groups, customer specifications, observation, warranty data, field reports, etc. This understanding of the customer needs is then summarized in a product planning matrix or “house of quality”. These matrices are used to translate higher level “what’s” or needs into lower level “how’s” – product requirements or technical characteristics to satisfy these needs. While the Quality Function Deployment matrices are a good communication tool at each step in the process, the matrices are the means and not the end. The real value is in the process of communicating and decision-making with QFD.
QFD is oriented toward involving a team of people representing the various functional departments that have involvement in product development: Marketing, Design Engineering, Quality Assurance, Manufacturing/ Manufacturing Engineering, Test Engineering, Finance, Product Support, etc. The active involvement of these departments can lead to balanced consideration of the requirements or “what’s” at each stage of this translation process and provide a mechanism to communicate hidden knowledge – knowledge that is known by one individual or department but may not otherwise be communicated through the organization. The structure of this methodology helps development personnel understand essential requirements, internal capabilities, and constraints and design the product so that everything is in place to achieve the desired outcome – a satisfied customer. Quality Function Deployment helps development personnel maintain a correct focus on true requirements and minimizes misinterpreting customer needs. As a result, QFD is an effective communications and quality planning tool.
Capturing the Voice of the Customer The process of capturing the voice of the customer is described in the papers on. It is important to remember that there is no one monolithic voice of the customer. Customer voices are diverse. In consumer markets, there are a variety of different needs. Even within one buying unit, there are multiple customer voices (e.g., children versus parents). This applies to industrial and government markets as well. There are even multiple customer voices within a single organization: the voice of the procuring organization, the voice of the user, and the voice of the supporting or maintenance organization.
These diverse voices must be considered, reconciled and balanced to develop a truly successful product. One technique to accomplish this is to use multiple columns for different priority ratings associated with each customer voice in the product planning matrix. Quality Function Deployment requires that the basic customer needs are identified. Frequently, customers will try to express their needs in terms of “how” the need can be satisfied and not in terms of “what” the need is.
This limits consideration of development alternatives. Development and marketing personnel should ask “why” until they truly understand what the root need is. Breakdown general requirements into more specific requirements by probing what is needed. Once customer needs are gathered, they then have to be organized. The mass of interview notes, requirements documents, market research, and customer data needs to be distilled into a handful of statements that express key customer needs.
Affinity diagramming is a useful tool to assist with this effort. Brief statements which capture key customer requirements are transcribed onto cards. A data dictionary which describes these statements of need are prepared to avoid any misinterpretation. These cards are organized into logical groupings or related needs. This will make it easier to identify any redundancy and serves as a basis for organizing the customer needs for the first QFD matrix.
In addition to “stated” or “spoken” customer needs, “unstated” or “unspoken” needs or opportunities should be identified. Needs that are assumed by customers and, therefore not verbalized, can be identified through preparation of a function tree. These needs normally are not included in the QFD matrix, unless it is important to maintain focus on one or more of these needs. Excitement opportunities (new capabilities or unspoken needs that will cause customer excitement) are identified through the voice of the engineer, marketing, or customer support representative. These can also be identified by observing customers use or maintain products and recognizing opportunities for improvement. QFD Methodology Flow The basic Quality Function Deployment methodology involves four basic phases that occur over the course of the product development process. During each phase one or more matrices are prepared to help plan and communicate critical product and process planning and design information.
This QFD methodology flow is represented below. Product Planning Using QFD Once customer needs are identified, preparation of the product planning matrix or “house of quality” can begin. The sequence of preparing the product planning matrix is as follows:. Customer needs or requirements are stated on the left side of the matrix as shown below. These are organized by category based on the affinity diagrams.
Insure the customer needs or requirements reflect the desired market segment(s). Address the unspoken needs (assumed and excitement capabilities). If the number of needs or requirements exceeds twenty to thirty items, decompose the matrix into smaller modules or subsystems to reduce the number of requirements in a matrix.
For each need or requirement, state the customer priorities using a 1 to 5 rating. Use ranking techniques and paired comparisons to develop priorities.
Evaluate prior generation products against competitive products. Use surveys, customer meetings or focus groups/clinics to obtain feedback. Include competitor’s customers to get a balanced perspective. Identify price points and market segments for products under evaluation. Identify warranty, service, reliability, and customer complaint problems to identify areas of improvement.
Based on this, develop a product strategy. Consider the current strengths and weaknesses relative to the competition? How do these strengths and weaknesses compare to the customer priorities? Where does the gap need to be closed and how can this be done – copying the competition or using a new approach or technology?
Identify opportunities for breakthroughs to exceed competitor’s capabilities, areas for improvement to equal competitors capabilities, and areas where no improvement will be made. This strategy is important to focus development efforts where they will have the greatest payoff. Establish product requirements or technical characteristics to respond to customer requirements and organize into related categories. Characteristics should be meaningful, measurable, and global. Characteristics should be stated in a way to avoid implying a particular technical solution so as not to constrain designers. Develop relationships between customer requirements and product requirements or technical characteristics.
Use symbols for strong, medium and weak relationships. Be sparing with the strong relationship symbol. Have all customer needs or requirement been addressed? Are there product requirements or technical characteristics stated that don’t relate to customer needs?. Develop a technical evaluation of prior generation products and competitive products. Get access to competitive products to perform product or technical benchmarking. Perform this evaluation based on the defined product requirements or technical characteristics.
Obtain other relevant data such as warranty or service repair occurrences and costs and consider this data in the technical evaluation. Develop preliminary target values for product requirements or technical characteristics.
Determine potential positive and negative interactions between product requirements or technical characteristics using symbols for strong or medium, positive or negative relationships. Too many positive interactions suggest potential redundancy in “the critical few” product requirements or technical characteristics.
Focus on negative interactions – consider product concepts or technology to overcome these potential tradeoff’s or consider the tradeoff’s in establishing target values. Calculate importance ratings. Assign a weighting factor to relationship symbols (9-3-1, 4-2-1, or 5-3-1). Multiply the customer importance rating by the weighting factor in each box of the matrix and add the resulting products in each column. Develop a difficulty rating (1 to 5 point scale, five being very difficult and risky) for each product requirement or technical characteristic. Consider technology maturity, personnel technical qualifications, business risk, manufacturing capability, supplier/subcontractor capability, cost, and schedule. Avoid too many difficult/high risk items as this will likely delay development and exceed budgets.
Assess whether the difficult items can be accomplished within the project budget and schedule. Analyze the matrix and finalize the product development strategy and product plans. Determine required actions and areas of focus. Finalize target values. Are target values properly set to reflect appropriate tradeoff’s? Do target values need to be adjusted considering the difficulty rating? Are they realistic with respect to the price points, available technology, and the difficulty rating?
Are they reasonable with respect to the importance ratings? Determine items for further QFD deployment. To maintain focus on “the critical few”, less significant items may be ignored with the subsequent QFD matrices.
Maintain the product planning matrix as customer requirements or conditions change. One of the guidelines for successful QFD matrices is to keep the amount of information in each matrix at a manageable level. With a more complex product, if one hundred potential needs or requirements were identified, and these were translated into an equal or even greater number of product requirements or technical characteristics, there would be more than 10,000 potential relationships to plan and manage. This becomes an impossible number to comprehend and manage. It is suggested that an individual matrix not address more than twenty or thirty items on each dimension of the matrix. Therefore, a larger, more complex product should have its customers needs decomposed into hierarchical levels.
To summarize the initial process, a product plan is developed based on initial market research or requirements definition. If necessary, feasibility studies or research and development are undertaken to determine the feasibility of the product concept. Product requirements or technical characteristics are defined through the matrix, a business justification is prepared and approved, and product design then commences. Concept Selection and Product Design Once product planning is complete, a more complete specification may be prepared.
The product requirements or technical characteristics and the product specification serve as the basis for developing product concepts. Product benchmarking, brainstorming, and research and development are sources for new product concepts. Once concepts are developed, they are analyzed and evaluated. Cost studies and trade studies are performed. The concept selection matrix can be used to help with this evaluation process. The concept selection matrix shown below lists the product requirements or technical characteristics down the left side of the matrix.
These serve as evaluation criteria. The importance rating and target values (not shown) are also carried forward and normalized from the product planning matrix. Product concepts are listed across the top.
The various product concepts are evaluated on how well they satisfy each criterion in the left column using the QFD symbols for strong, moderate or weak. If the product concept does not satisfy the criteria, the column is left blank.
The symbol or numeric weights (5-3-1) are multiplied by the importance rating for each criterion. These weighted factors are then added for each column. The preferred concept will have the highest total. This concept selection technique is also a design synthesis technique. For each blank or weak symbol or low rating in the preferred concept’s column, other concept approaches with strong or moderate symbols for that criteria are reviewed to see if a new approach can be synthesized by borrowing part of another concept approach to improve on the preferred approach. Based on this and other evaluation steps, a product concept is selected. The product concept is represented with block diagrams or a design layout.
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Critical subsystems, modules or parts are identified from the layout. Criticality is determined in terms of effect on performance, reliability, and quality. Techniques such as fault tree analysis or failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) can be used to determine criticality from a reliability or quality perspective. The subsystem, assembly, or part deployment matrix is then prepared. The process leading up to the preparation of the deployment matrix is depicted below. The product requirements or technical characteristics defined in the product planning matrix become the “what’s” that are listed down the left side of the deployment matrix along with priorities (based on the product planning matrix importance ratings) and target values. The deployment matrix is prepared in a manner very similar to the product planning matrix.
These product requirements or technical characteristics are translated into critical subsystem, assembly or part characteristics. This translation considers criticality of the subsystem, assembly or parts as well as their characteristics from a performance perspective to complement consideration of criticality from a quality and reliability perspective.
Relationships are established between product requirements or technical characteristics and the critical subsystem, assembly or part characteristics. Importance ratings are calculated and target values for each critical subsystem, assembly or part characteristic are established. An example of a part/assembly deployment matrix is shown: Process Design Quality Function Deployment continues this translation and planning into the process design phase. A concept selection matrix can be used to evaluate different manufacturing process approaches and select the preferred approach.
Based on this, the process planning matrix shown below is prepared. Again, the “how’s” from the higher-level matrix (in this case the critical subsystem, assembly or part characteristics) become the “what’s” which are used to plan the process for fabricating and assembling the product. Important processes and tooling requirements can be identified to focus efforts to control, improve and upgrade processes and equipment. At this stage, communication between Engineering and Manufacturing is emphasized and trade-off’s can be made as appropriate to achieve mutual goals based on the customer needs. In addition to planning manufacturing processes, more detailed planning related to process control, quality control, set-up, equipment maintenance and testing can be supported by additional matrices. The following provides an example of a process/quality control matrix.
The process steps developed in the process planning matrix are used as the basis for planning and defining specific process and quality control steps in this matrix. The result of this planning and decision-making is that Manufacturing focuses on the critical processes, dimensions and characteristics that will have a significant effect on producing a product that meets customers’ needs. There is a clear trail from customer needs to the design and manufacturing decisions to satisfy those customer needs. Disagreements over what is important at each stage of the development process should be minimized, and there will be greater focus on “the critical few” items that affect the success of the product. QFD Process Quality Function Deployment begins with product planning; continues with product design and process design; and finishes with process control, quality control, testing, equipment maintenance, and training. As a result, this process requires multiple functional disciplines to adequately address this range of activities. QFD is synergistic with multi-function product development teams.
It can provide a structured process for these teams to begin communicating, making decisions and planning the product. It is a useful methodology, along with product development teams, to support a concurrent engineering or integrated product development approach. Quality Function Deployment, by its very structure and planning approach, requires that more time be spent up-front in the development process making sure that the team determines, understands and agrees with what needs to be done before plunging into design activities.
As a result, less time will be spent downstream because of differences of opinion over design issues or redesign because the product was not on target. It leads to consensus decisions, greater commitment to the development effort, better coordination, and reduced time over the course of the development effort. QFD requires discipline. It is not necessarily easy to get started with.
The following is a list of recommendations to facilitate initially using QFD. Obtain management commitment to use QFD. Establish clear objectives and scope of QFD use. Avoid first using it on a large, complex project if possible. Will it be used for the overall product or applied to a subsystem, module, assembly or critical part? Will the complete QFD methodology be used or will only the product planning matrix be completed?.
Establish multi-functional team. Get an adequate time commitment from team members. Obtain QFD training with practical hands-on exercises to learn the methodology and use a facilitator to guide the initial efforts. Schedule regular meetings to maintain focus and avoid the crush of the development schedule overshadowing effective planning and decision-making.
Avoid gathering perfect data. Many times, significant customer insights and data exist within the organization, but they are in the form of hidden knowledge – not communicated to people with the need for this information.
On the other hand, it may be necessary to spend additional time gathering the voice of the customer before beginning QFD. Avoid technical arrogance and the belief that company personnel know more than the customer. Quality Function Deployment is an extremely useful methodology to facilitate communication, planning, and decision-making within a product development team. It is not a paperwork exercise or additional documentation that must be completed in order to proceed to the next development milestone. It not only brings the new product closer to the intended target, but reduces development cycle time and cost in the process.
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For further information, contact Kenneth Crow at DRM Associates Phone +1 310-377-5569 Email.
Quality function deployment. 1. PRODUCT BRIEF DEVELOPMENT TOOLS Quality Function DeploymentIn a few words: The voice of the customer translated into the voice of the engineer.To design a product well, a design teams needs to know what it is Technique useful for:they are designing, and what the end-users will expect from it. NewQuality Function Deployment is a systematic approach to design Derivative First of a kindbased on a close awareness of customer desires, coupled with the Marketintegration of corporate functional groups. It consists in Established Me too withtranslating customer desires (for example, the ease of writing for a twist Next generationa pen) into design characteristics (pen ink viscosity, pressure on Familiar Newball-point) for each stage of the product development (Rosenthal, Product Concept1992).Ultimately the goal of QFD is to translateoften subjective quality criteria into objectiveones that can be quantified and measured andwhich can then be used to design andmanufacture the product. It is a complimentarymethod for determining how and wherepriorities are to be assigned in productdevelopment.
The intent is to employobjective procedures in increasing detailthroughout the development of the product.(Reilly, 1999)Quality Function Deployment was developedby Yoji Akao in Japan in 1966. By 1972 thepower of the approach had been welldemonstrated at the Mitsubishi HeavyIndustries Kobe Shipyard (Sullivan, 1986) andin 1978 the first book on the subject waspublished in Japanese and then later translatedinto English in 1994 (Mizuno and Akao,1994).In Akao’s words, QFD 'is a method for developing a design quality aimed at satisfying theconsumer and then translating the consumers demand into design targets and major qualityassurance points to be used throughout the production phase. QFD is a way to assure thedesign quality while the product is still in the design stage.' As a very important side benefit hepoints out that, when appropriately applied, QFD has demonstrated the reduction of developmenttime by one-half to one-third. (Akao, 1990)The 3 main goals in implementing QFD are: 1. Prioritize spoken and unspoken customer wants and needs. Translate these needs into technical characteristics and specifications.
Build and deliver a quality product or service by focusing everybody toward customer satisfaction. Since its introduction, Quality Function Deployment has helped to transform the way manycompanies:. Plan new products. Design product requirements. Determine process characteristics.
Control the manufacturing process. Document already existing product specificationsQFD uses some principles from Concurrent Engineering in that cross-functional teams areinvolved in all phases of product development.
Each of the four phases in a QFD process uses amatrix to translate customer requirements from initial planning stages through production control(Becker Associates Inc, 2000).Each phase, or matrix, represents a more specific aspect of the products requirements.Relationships between elements are evaluated for each phase. Only the most important aspectsfrom each phase are deployed into the next matrix. Phase 1, Product Planning: Building the House of Quality. Led by the marketing department, Phase 1, or product planning, is also called The House of Quality. Many organizations only get through this phase of a QFD process. Phase 1 documents customer requirements, warranty data, competitive opportunities, product measurements, competing product measures, and the technical ability of the organization to meet each customer requirement. Getting good data from the customer in Phase 1 is critical to the success of the entire QFD process.
Phase 2, Product Design: This phase 2 is led by the engineering department. Product design requires creativity and innovative team ideas. Product concepts are created during this phase and part specifications are documented. Parts that are determined to be most important to meeting customer needs are then deployed into process planning, or Phase 3. Phase 3, Process Planning: Process planning comes next and is led by manufacturing engineering. During process planning, manufacturing processes are flowcharted and process parameters (or target values) are documented. Phase 4, Process Control: And finally, in production planning, performance indicators are created to monitor the production process, maintenance schedules, and skills training for operators.
Also, in this phase decisions are made as to which process poses the most risk and controls are put in place to prevent failures. The quality assurance department in concert with manufacturing leads Phase 4.The House of QualityThe first phase in the implementation of the Quality Function Deployment process involvesputting together a 'House of Quality' (Hauser and Clausing, 1988) such as the one shown below,which is for the development of a climbing harness (fig. From Lowe & Ridgway, 2001). Steps to the House of Quality (Becker and Associates, 2000) Step 1: Customer Requirements - 'Voice of the Customer' The first step in a QFD project is to determine what market segments will be analyzed during the process and to identify who the customers are. The team then gathers information from customers on the requirements they have for the product or service. In order to organize and evaluate this data, the team uses simple quality tools like Affinity Diagrams or Tree Diagrams. Step 2: Regulatory RequirementsNot all product or service requirements are known to the customer, so the team mustdocument requirements that are dictated by management or regulatory standards that theproduct must adhere to.Step 3: Customer Importance RatingsOn a scale from 1 - 5, customers then rate the importance of each requirement.
Thisnumber will be used later in the relationship matrix.Step 4: Customer Rating of the CompetitionUnderstanding how customers rate the competition can be a tremendous competitiveadvantage. In this step of the QFD process, it is also a good idea to ask customers howyour product or service rates in relation to the competition. There is remodeling that cantake place in this part of the House of Quality. Additional rooms that identify salesopportunities, goals for continuous improvement, customer complaints, etc., can beadded.Step 5: Technical Descriptors - 'Voice of the Engineer'The technical descriptors are attributes about the product or service that can be measuredand benchmarked against the competition. Technical descriptors may exist that yourorganization is already using to determine product specification, however newmeasurements can be created to ensure that your product is meeting customer needs. Step 6: Direction of ImprovementAs the team defines the technical descriptors, a determination must be made as to thedirection of movement for each descriptor.Step 7: Relationship MatrixThe relationship matrix is where the team determines the relationship between customerneeds and the companys ability to meet those needs.
The team asks the question, 'what isthe strength of the relationship between the technical descriptors and the customersneeds?' Relationships can either be weak, moderate, or strong and carry a numeric valueof 1, 3 or 9. Step 8: Organizational DifficultyRate the design attributes in terms of organizational difficulty. It is very possible thatsome attributes are in direct conflict. Increasing the number of sizes may be in conflictwith the companies stock holding policies, for example. Step 9: Technical Analysis of Competitor ProductsTo better understand the competition, engineering then conducts a comparison ofcompetitor technical descriptors. This process involves reverse engineering competitorproducts to determine specific values for competitor technical descriptors.
Step 10: Target Values for Technical DescriptorsAt this stage in the process, the QFD team begins to establish target values for eachtechnical descriptor. Target values represent 'how much' for the technical descriptors,and can then act as a base-line to compare against. Step 11: Correlation MatrixThis room in the matrix is where the term House of Quality comes from because it makesthe matrix look like a house with a roof. The correlation matrix is probably the least usedroom in the House of Quality; however, this room is a big help to the design engineers inthe next phase of a comprehensive QFD project. Team members must examine how eachof the technical descriptors impact each other.
The team should document strong negativerelationships between technical descriptors and work to eliminate physical contradictions. Step 12: Absolute ImportanceFinally, the team calculates the absolute importance for each technical descriptor. Thisnumerical calculation is the product of the cell value and the customer importance rating.Numbers are then added up in their respective columns to determine the importance foreach technical descriptor. Now you know which technical aspects of your product mattersthe most to your customer!. The Next stageThe above process is then repeated in a slightly simplified way for the next three project phases.A simplified matrix involving steps 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9 & 11 above is developed.The main difference with the subsequent phases however, is that in Phase 2 the process becomesa translation of the voice of the engineer in to the voice of the part design specifications. Then, inphase 3, the part design specifications get translated into the voice of manufacturing planning.And finally, in phase 4, the voice of manufacturing is translated into the voice of productionplanning.QFD is a systematic means of ensuring that customer requirements are accurately translated intorelevant technical descriptors throughout each stage of product development.
Therefore, meetingor exceeding customer demands means more than just maintaining or improving productperformance. It means designing and manufacturing products that delight customers and fulfilltheir unarticulated desires. Companies growing into the 21st century will be enterprises thatfoster the needed innovation to create new markets.ReferencesAkao, Y., ed. Quality Function Deployment, Productivity Press, Cambridge MA.Becker Associates Inc, andJ. Clausing (1988).
'The House of Quality,' The Harvard Business Review,May-June, No. 63-73Lowe, A.J. & Ridgway, K.
Quality Function Deployment, University of Sheffield, 2001Mizuno, S. QFD: The Customer-Driven Approach to Quality Planningand Development, Asian Productivity Organization, Tokyo, Japan, available from QualityResources, One Water Street, White Plains NY.Rosenthal, Stephen R, Effective product design and development, How to cut lead time andincrease customer satisfaction, Business One Irwin, Homewood, Illinois 60430, 1992Reilly, Norman B, The Team based product development guidebook, ASQ Quality Press,Milwaukee Wisconsin, 1999Sullivan, L.P., 1986, 'Quality Function Deployment', Quality Progress, June, pp 39-50.Recommended further readingClausing, D. 'Enhanced Quality Function Deployment', Design andProductivity International Conference, Honolulu HI, 6-8 Feb.Day, R. Quality Function Deployment: Linking a Company with Its Customers,ASQC Quality Press, Milwaukee WI.Dean, E. Quality Function Deployment for Large Systems', Proceedings of the 1992International Engineering Management Conference, Eatontown, NJ, 25-28 October.King, B. Better Designs in Half the Time: Implementing Quality Function Deployment inAmerica, GOAL/QPC, Methuen MA.