Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

Sasadhar Bera, IIM Ranchi

Introduction
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a customer driven
approach which translates the customer needs (or voice of
customer) into technical requirements such as design
targets, manufacturing process parameters and major
quality assurance points throughout the product/service
development process.
It also shows which design targets are more important to
ensure customer satisfaction.
It helps a company move towards proactive designing
quality rather than traditional inspection of product quality.

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Introduction (Contd.)
QFD was introduced by Yoji Akao in Japan in 1966 and
successfully applied at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Kobe
Shipyard in 1972.

In late eighties, many Japanese, American, and European

companies have adopted QFD to develop their
product/service.
QFD uses a series of matrices, which look like "house" to
deploy customer input throughout design, manufacturing,
and service delivery.
Affinity diagram, tree diagram, matrix diagram and matrix
data analysis tools are used in QFD.
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Voice of Customer

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Voice of Customer
A customer need is a description in customer's own words,
about the benefit to be fulfilled by the product or service.
The voice of the customer is a hierarchical set of "customer
needs" where each need has a priority. Priority indicates
importance of a need to the customer.

Developing product based on the voice of the customer

becomes a key criterion in quality management.

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Voice of Customer (Contd.)

The three steps in the measurement and analysis of voice of
customer as input in QFD are:
(1) Identifying customer needs,
(2) Structuring customer needs, and
(3) Setting priorities for customer needs.
Identifying customer needs: It is primarily a qualitative
research task. The three questions which we have heard
most often are: (1) Do focus group identify more customer
needs? (2) How many people (or groups) must be
interviewed? and (3) How many team members should
analyse the data?
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Voice of Customer (Contd.)

Structuring customer needs: QFD structures the customer
needs into a hierarchy of primary, secondary, and tertiary
needs.
Primary needs, also known as strategic needs, are the 5 to
10 top-level needs. Each primary need is elaborated into 3
to 10 secondary needs. The tertiary needs, also known as
operational needs, provide detail so that engineering and
R&D can develop engineering solutions that satisfy the
secondary needs.
Setting priorities for customer needs: Some needs have
higher priorities for customers than other needs. The QFD
team uses these priorities to make decisions which balance
the cost of fulfilling a customer need.
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Four-Phase Model of QFD

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Four-Phase Model of QFD

The Four-Phase Model divides a product development
process into four phases or steps using four matrices.

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Four-Phase Model of QFD (Contd.)

1st Phase: House of Quality (HOQ)
In the first phase, collected customer needs for the product
(or voice of customer) called WHATs and then to transform
these needs into technical requirements called HOWs.
The first phase develop matrix based on customer
requirements, importance rating of each requirement,
competing product evaluation, technical ability to meet
each requirement. The output of this phase is prioritized
technical requirements.

This phase is so fundamental in product development that

the corresponding QFD matrix is given a special name called
the House Of Quality (HOQ).
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Four-Phase Model of QFD

2nd Phase: Parts Deployment
The second phase transforms the prioritized technical
requirements into part characteristics, called Part
Deployment. Parts are considered to be most important to
meeting customer needs. Parts Deployment requires
creativity and innovative team ideas. Product concepts are
created during this phase and parts specification are
documented.

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Four-Phase Model of QFD

3rd Phase: Process Planning
The third phase examines the relationship between part
characteristics and manufacturing process. In process
planning, flow charts are prepared for manufacturing
processes and process parameters (or target values) are
documented.

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Four-Phase Model of QFD

4th Phase: Production Planning
In last phase, the right production and control plans are
created to monitor the production process, maintenance
schedules, and skills needed for operators. Also, in this
phase, decisions are made on the most risky process and
contingency plans are put in place to prevent failures.

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House of Quality

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House of Quality (HOQ)

Structure of HOQ

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House of Quality (HOQ)

(Contd.)

In theory, the goal of a House-of-Quality is prioritised

technical requirement and to specify target value for each
of the technical requirements.
The left wall of the HOQ includes the customer
requirements or needs. The customer requirements contain
the voice of the customer, or what the customer expects
from the product.

On the right side of wall are the prioritized customer

requirements, or planning matrix. Listed items are customer
competitive evaluation, customer importance rating of
requirements, target value, scale-up factor, and sales point.
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House of Quality (HOQ)

(Contd.)

The ceiling or second floor, of the house contains the

technical requirements. Customer expectations (customer
requirements) are translated into engineering characteristics
(technical requirements). Consistency of the product is
provided through engineering characteristics, design
constraints, and parameters.
The interior walls of the house are the relationships between
customer requirements and technical requirements. The roof
of the house is the inter-relationship between technical
requirements. Trade-offs between similar and/or conflicting
technical requirements are identified. The foundation of the
house is the prioritized technical requirements. Items such as
technical benchmarking, degree of technical difficulty, and
target values are listed.
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Steps to Build House of Quality

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HOQ: Identifying Customer Needs

Step1: Identifying customer needs (WHATs)
The first step of HOQ is to identify the customers of the
product. Customer should be identified according to the
nature of product and users of the product.
In this step, the essence of customers needs and
expectations are collected. Available methods for collecting
customer needs include email survey, focus groups,
individual interview, listening and observing peoples
comments in trade shows, customer feedback, complaints,
warranty data, and sales records.
An affinity diagram or tree diagram tool is used to organize
and evaluate opinions, ideas and information.
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HOQ: Identifying Customer Needs (Contd.)

This list of customer requirements is divided into a hierarchy
of primary, secondary, and tertiary customer requirements. An
example of customer needs of fried vegetable is as below:
Primary Needs

Secondary Needs

Appropriate
ingredient

Good taste
Good smell
Good colour

Good appearance
Good shape

Tertiary Needs
Not too salty
Moderately spicy
Appetizing
Hot
Fresh
Sweet smell
Not overcooked
Normal colour
Good looking plate
Not too full
Tasteful arrangement
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HOQ: Planning Matrix

Step2: Planning matrix
The following steps are followed to develop the planning
matrix.
Step2.a)
Step2.b)
Step2.c)
Step2.d)
Step2.e)
Step2.f)

Customer competitive evaluation

Relative ranking of the customer needs
Target value
Scale-up factor
Sales point
Final weight of WHATs

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HOQ: Technical Requirements

Step3: Identifying technical requirements (HOWs)
Technical requirements are design characteristics that
describe in the language of the designer or engineers
requirements. The product development team or
technicians identify the technical requirements (HOWs) by
brainstorming sessions. Sometimes HOWs can be generated
from current product standard.
Proper HOWs may be selected by creating a cause-andeffect diagram that ensures that the HOWs are the firstorder causes for the WHATs.
An affinity diagram may also be used to organize the
selected HOWs .
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HOQ: Technical Relationship Between WHATs

and HOWs
Step4: Technical relationship between WHATs and HOWs
The relationship matrix of WHATs versus HOWs is a
systematic means for identifying the degree of relationship
between each WHAT and each HOW. The purpose of the
relationship matrix is to show whether the final technical
requirements adequately address customer requirements.
This assessment is usually based on expert experience,
customer responses, or controlled experiments and is a
vital step in the HOQ process.

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HOQ: Inter-relationship Between HOWs

Step5: Inter-relationship between HOWs

The roof of the house of quality, called the correlation

matrix, is used to identify any inter-relationship between
each of the technical requirements. The correlation matrix
is a triangular table attached to the technical requirements.
Different symbols are used to describe the strength of the
interrelationships.

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HOQ: Prioritize Technical Requirements

Step6: Prioritize technical requirements
The following steps are followed to develop prioritized
technical requirement.
Step6.a)
Step6.b)
Step6.c)
Step6.d)

Technical competitive evaluation

Degree of technical difficulty
Target value
Final importance of HOWs

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HOQ: Prioritize Technical Requirements (Contd.)

Step6a: Technical competitive evaluation
The performance of companys product and competitors
similar products are evaluated on each technical
requirement. The technical competitive evaluation is often
useful in uncovering gaps in engineering judgment. The
ranking scale is used in each HOW is same as used in
customer competitive evaluation.
Step6b: Degree of technical difficulty

The degree of technical difficulty determines the ability of

the company to implement the HOWs. The development
team could estimate the difficulty level to achieve it
through engineering and cost analysis.
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HOQ: Prioritize Technical Requirements (Contd.)

Step6c: Target values
A target for a HOW represents a level of performance on
the HOW is required for its product to be competitive in the
relevant markets. The targets should also be set to be
reachable according to the companys technical resources
and existing product strength and weakness.
Step6d: Final importance of HOWs

1 n
Final importance: a j R ij ci
d j i 1
Rij : Weight assigned to relationship matrix
ci : Final weights of WHATs , i = 1, 2, . . ., n
dj : Technical difficulty of HOWs , j = 1, 2, . . ., m
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Benefits and Issues of QFD

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Benefits of QFD
Tangible benefits
Intangible benefits
Lower start-up cost and production Improves customer
cycle. Reduction in design time and satisfaction
design cost.
Identify the areas to be acted upon Provides a basis of
and simulate the new design ideas improvement
planning
Involvement of every functional Facilitates
area
such
as
marketing, multidisciplinary
manufacturing, purchasing etc.
teamwork

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Issues in QFD
QFD can be used in many different areas of the business like
planning, testing, engineering, manufacturing, distribution,
marketing, and service. However, it must be understood
that a large amount of effort can be required to perform a
formal QFD evaluation. If the amount of work is thought to
be excessive, the other tools are more applicable.

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