Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

1.0 Introduction
QFD is a technique invented in Japan in the late 1960s (for the design of large ships). It is a
method applicable to any team based planning process where the requirement is to
systematically prioritise responses to a given set of objectives. Objectives are sometimes
known as “whats”, the responses “hows”. The use of QFD spread to the west in the early
1980’s & came to be known as part of the set of tools used to implement Total Quality
Management (TQM).

In industry QFD is an interdisciplinary team process used to plan & develop new or improved
products & services, the key features being that it:

 focuses on customer requirements

 uses information about the competitive environment to prioritise design goals
 uses & strengthens inter-functional teamwork

The QFD process starts with the needs of the customer & applies them to the whole product
development life cycle i.e. concept, development, planning & production.

2.0 The Basic QFD Process

2.1 Introduction
The QFD process consists of developing either one or a number of matrices (also known as
quality tables), each of which has a specific purpose. The first of these is known as the
‘House of Quality’ or HOQ

2.2 House Of Quality

The HOQ shows the customer’s wants & needs (commonly called the ‘voice of the customer’)
& the responses of the development team in various technical aspects aimed at meeting
these needs. This information is represented in a number of interrelated matrices as shown
below:

5
Technical
Correlations

3 Technical Response

1. 4 2

Customer Relationships Planning

Needs & (Impact of technical Matrix
Wants response on customer
& needs)

6 Technical Matrix

Fig. 1 - Elements of the ‘House of Quality’

The order here represents the order in which the matrices are generally completed.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) 1

Section 1 : Customer Needs & Wants
A customer need is a statement in their own words of a benefit they get, could or might get
from a product or service. This section is a structured list of customer wants & needs (also
known as customer attributes), usually determined by qualitative market research. These
wants/needs are usually obtained using techniques such as individual interviews or through
focus groups. An alternative is to derive them from customer complaints. It is an important
stage because it drives the rest of the analysis, a misunderstanding here can lead to a
product failing to meet customer requirements. Product developers have the difficult task of
distinguishing between customer’s needs & technical solutions to meet those needs.

e.g. A customer asks for a car with tinted glass … is this a need?

The customer may need some of the things tinted glass provides:

 reduced glare from sunlight or headlights from other traffic

 increased privacy
 a cooler interior due to reduced solar radiation

But there are a number of possible technical solutions to meet these needs tinted glass is not
the only answer. (e.g. A cooler interior can be achieved by air conditioning or increased
ventilation).

When asked what they want, customers often ask for the specific technical solution & don’t
define what they actually need, the developer has to dig deeper than this initial response.

This stage will generate large amounts of qualitative information, which needs to be
structured to be useful for further analysis. A typical method for doing this involves
constructing affinity diagrams & tree diagrams

An affinity diagram is used to gather large amounts of qualitative data & organise it into
subgroups based on similarities between data items. The QFD process collects or generates
a large set of customer needs for a product, in an unstructured form. The development team
can pair up needs based on similar attributes using intuition or gut feelings. The pairs can be
further aggregated into larger common themes.

For example consider the customer needs for a candle

Be visually attractive Be fragrant Be dripless

Have a large flame Be smokeless Burn a long time

These could be aggregated as follows:

Aesthetics Lighting Convenience Efficiency

be visually attractive have a large flame be smokeless burn a long time

be fragrant be dripless

After grouping the needs, a tree diagram can be constructed, the branches of which can be
used to look for any gaps omissions or errors in the affinity diagram & which can then be
added to the QFD matrix:

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) 2

 Be visually attractive
Aesthetics
Be fragrant

Lighting Have a large flame

Candle
Be smokeless
Convenience
Be dripless

Efficiency Long burning

Fig. 2 - Example tree diagram

Section 2 : Planning Matrix

This section helps the development team prioritise customer needs, recognising that
resources aren’t unlimited. Filling in the matrix gives a method for comparing current product
performance against that of the competition & developing a strategy to optimise customer
satisfaction. The matrix consists of a series of columns representing key product planning
information for each customer need.

The process involves asking the following for each need:

 how important is it?

 how well are we meeting it today?
 how well is the competition meeting it?
 what is our goal in meeting this need?
 if the need is met, will it help sell the product?

customer satisfaction
importance
goal sales
point

competitive improvement weighting

satisfaction ratio

Fig. 3 - The planning matrix

Importance: A numeric description of the importance of the different needs to the customer,
typically from a customer survey. It may use absolute, relative or ordinal measures to specify
importance.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) 3

Customer Satisfaction: the customer’s perception of how the current product is meeting the
needs of the customer. Often as a result of a customer survey, with grades such as: Very
Well, Well, Neutral, Poorly etc. translated into a numeric scale.

Competitive Satisfaction: A similar rating of customer satisfaction with competitor’s products.

Goal: Here the team decides what level of customer satisfaction they are to aim at in meeting
the customer need - the goal. This is often expressed on the same scale as the above
satisfaction ratings. This is arrived at by considering current performance & the importance of
each need. Goals set here have a major impact of the product development.

Improvement Ratio: This ratio takes into account the effort required to achieve the goals set in
the pervious column, & hence reorders the importance of the customer needs. It is commonly
assessed as follows:

Improvement Ratio = Goal

Current Performance

Sales Point This reflects the perceived sales benefits based on how well the customer need
is met. e.g. 1 = no sales point , 1.5 = strong sales point

Weighting: this gives a figure for the overall importance of each customer need to the
development team & hence sets their priorities. It can be calculated as follows

Weight = Importance x Improvement Ratio x Sales Point

Section 3 : Technical Response

The technical response is a high level technical description of the proposed product/service in
terms of Substitute Quality Characteristics (SQC) or Product Technical Requirements (PTR),
usually generated from the customer’s needs/wants. There are several ways of defining the
SQCs, one common one being in terms of Performance Measures directly derived from
customer needs

The process consists of for each customer need:

1) define measures, these must:

 be measurable during development
 be controllable by the development team
 define the ‘direction of goodness’ i.e. ‘more the better’ , ‘less the better’ or ‘target is
best’
In addition, the units of measurement should be defined.

2) define measurements i.e. describe how each measurement will be

performed. This avoids confusion within the development team as to
exactly what is being optimised

For example the set of SQCs for a pencil might be as follows:

SQC Direction of
goodness
Length Target
Time between sharpening MTB = More the Better
Lead dust generated LTB= Less the Better
Pages per pencil MTB
Pressure cycles to erase LTB

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) 4

Section 4 : Relationships

Contains judgements made by the development team about the strength of the relationship
between each want/need & each technical response (SQC)

The impact of an SQC on the customer satisfaction for a particular customer need can has
four possibilities:

Impact Symbol Value Description

not linked (blank) 0
possibly 1 for large changes in the SQC, little or no change in
linked customer satisfaction is predicted
moderately 3 for large changes in the SQC, minor changes in
linked customer satisfaction are predicted
strongly 9 for small changes in the SQC, significant changes
linked in customer satisfaction are predicted

For example in the case of the pencil

Length Time Pages Cycles

between per to
sharpens pencil erase
Easy to hold
Wont smear
Point lasts
Easy to erase

There is a strong link between the customer requirement that the point should last a long time
& the SQC of the time between sharpening.

Section 5 : Technical Correlations

The roof of the ‘house’, this defines the interrelationships between the elements of the
technical response (SQCs). It is a key area as regards concurrent engineering as it shows
which technical areas need to collaborate closely & communicate effectively.

As the value of one SQC is changed, another may be impacted, either in it’s ‘direction of
goodness or the opposite direction. The degree & direction of impact can have a major impact
on the product development.

The interrelationships are shown in a diagonal matrix as shown below:

SQC SQC SQC SQC SQC

The symbols used are explained below:

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) 5

 Symbol Meaning
strong positive impact
moderate positive impact
blank no impact
x moderate negative impact
xx strong negative impact

For example in the case of the pencil, there is a strong positive correlation between the time
between sharpening & the number of pages per pencil.

Time SQC Pages SQC

between per
sharpens pencil

Fig. 4 - Example technical correlation

Section 6 : Technical Matrix

The technical matrix is concerned with issues relating to the technical responses to customer
needs.

priorities
comp benchmarks
own performance
targets

Fig. 5 - Contents of technical matrix

Priorities:
This section is used to calculate the relative contributions of the SQCs to overall customer
satisfaction, a key QFD result.

SQC 1 SQC 2 weight n weight

Need A 3.9 0.4 15 0.43
Need B 1.7 0 20 0.57

Contribution 5.6 0.4 35

N. Contribution 0.93 0.07 6.0

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) 6

The contributions are calculated as follows (for SQC 1):

 The impact of SQC1 to Need A is high (numeric value : 9)

 Multiply this impact by normalised weight for Need A, (0.43) to give 3.9, this value is
known as the relationship
 Repeat this for all other Needs & sum the relationships to give the overall contribution for
SQC 1 (5.6).

Repeating this process for all SQCs allows their relative contribution towards customer
satisfaction to be assessed & hence their relative importance in the development effort.

Competitive Benchmarking:
After determining which SQCs are the most important (see above), the development team
can then go on to determine if their product is going to be competitive, by benchmarking
them. Competitive benchmarking is a process of examining the competition’s product &
comparing with one’s own, with the aim of improving one’s own product. The process will
often involve assessing the competitor products using the same performance measures used
to define the SQCs. The data may be presented numerically or graphically as below:

SQC SQC SQC SQC SQC

1
2 Our performance
3 Competitor
4
5

Fig. 6 – SQC Graphs

Targets:
The aim here is to set (numerical) targets for SQCs, which will drive all subsequent
development work. Setting targets is nothing new, but QFD avoids the team considering a
mixture of customer related & technical goals that may be unrelated & not in a prioritised
form. The targets in QFD relate directly back to customer needs & are related to the
competition & our own current performance. Numeric targets may be set as follows:

 Start with highest ranking SQC

 Determine the teams strength relative to the competition
 Using knowledge about the difficulty of performing well on the SQC, decide whether to :
 aim to do better than competition
 aim to match the competition
 concede technical leadership to the competition

Generally, the aim should be to exceed the best of the competition for SQCs which matter
most to overall customer satisfaction.

3.0 Extensions To The House Of Quality

3.1 Introduction
The basic HOQ may be extended, typically to include costing information within the technical
matrix Because this is adding to the bottom of the HOQ, this is sometimes known as the
‘basement’. Alternatively, additional matrices & other analyses can be linked to the HOQ,
which aid the more detailed decisions that have to be made in developing a product or
service. Several different configurations have been proposed, but one which is often used for
product development uses four matrices.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) 7

3.2 Linking Matrices

HOQ: hows 2. hows 3. hows

HOQ HOQ HOQ HOQ Matrix 2 HOQ 2 Matrix 3 2

whats whats hows hows hows hows
(priorities) (priorities) (priorities)

HOQ hows 2. hows 3. hows

(priorities) (priorities) (priorities)

Fig. 7 - Linking QFD matrices

A number of matrices can be linked together so that the outcomes from one matrix become
the inputs to the following one. In other words, the how’s of one matrix become the what’s of
the next.

3.3 The Four Phase Model

The most widely used QFD model used in the USA is the four-phase model an example of
which is illustrated & described below. It provides linkage all the way from the voice of the
customer to details of manufacturing operation parameters (see Figure 8 over page).

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) 8

 Product Design Manufacturing Production
Planning Deployment Planning Planning
(House of Quality) (Part Deployment) (Process Planning) (Production Ops.
Planning)

SQCs Part Process Production

Characteristics Parameters Operations

Voice
of
Cust.

Performance Part Process

measure characteristics parameters
technical importance importance
importance

Fig. 8 - The four phase model

Product Planning (House Of Quality)

This is completed as in section 2 above.

Design Deployment (Part Deployment)

The first step in part deployment is to break the product down into subsystems & then parts.
The important characteristics of each part are then identified, (these are the characteristics
that are critical to their design). Characteristics can include measurements & directions of
goodness.

The next step is to estimate the impact of each part characteristic on the performance
measures (SQCs) taken from the House of Quality. After doing similar calculations to those
used to calculate SQC priorities, the relative importance of the part characteristics are
calculated. This tells the developers which parts & characteristics are the drivers of customer
satisfaction.

Referring back to the pencil example, the part characteristics might include the graphite,
eraser, body, point & graphics

Manufacturing Planning (Process Planning)

This matrix identifies the major process/manufacturing operations, determines if the
processes are adequate & identifies the most important operations. In addition the key
process parameters may be determined. The steps involved i involve:
 the team identifies the main process flow or system assembly process & determines the
subassembly processes that feed into it.
 all the operations needed to produce each subassembly are then identified
 finally manufacturing knowledge & possibly experimentation is used to identify the key
process parameters for the operations e.g. machine settings.

These process parameters become the “how’s” in the matrix & are prioritised on the basis of
their impact on the part characteristics.

Production Planning (Production Operations Planning)

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) 9

Depending on the detail of the QFD method used, this may not be strictly a matrix, but a chart
of topics/issues that should be considered in planning the production steps derived from the
prioritised process parameters from the previous matrix. These could include:

 machine settings
 control methods
 control documentation
 operator training requirements

The planner fills in the chart with comments, target values or any other appropriate method.
The chart aims to make sure everything that impact customer satisfaction is checked.

4.0 Benefits of Using QFD

 Cost reduction
QFD contributes to cost reduction by streamlining processes & reducing rework & waste. It
does this by focusing the development team on activities which matter most to the customer &
away from those that have little to do with customer satisfaction. QFD also reduces the
likelihood of ill-considered changes during the development as any proposals can be checked
back against the original criteria, Thus rushed decisions which don’t take into account the
whole product & the needs of the customer can be avoided.

 Reduced time to market

There are many obstacles to reducing the time to develop new products,
such as having a poor understanding of customer needs & ineffective
prioritisation of the development effort. QFD addresses both of these.

On the surface QFD may appear to add to the problem as a QFD analysis requires
(potentially long) meetings involving a lot of people. However the systematic nature of the
process avoids much of the time wasting that would otherwise happen, but which isn’t
generally noticed.

For example development time can be reduced through there being less mid-project changes
(see above) & less implementation errors due to the systematic planning carried through from
the initial ‘voice of the customer’.

 Improved communication
QFD is a team based activity, together, the language of one phase of the development is
translated into that needed for the following stages, this increases the overall understanding
of all members of the team. The systematic nature of the process helps focus on facts rather
than feelings & because the decision process is recorded it can be re-examined at any time.

 Promotes teamwork
QFD brings together multifunctional teams to develop the House Of Quality, & at all
subsequent stages keeps the team focused on what matters (i.e. customer satisfaction),
allowing prioritised optimisation of the product.

5.0 Further Reading

Cohen, L. (1995) Quality Function Deployment: Making QFD work for you. Addison Wesley.
Reading, MA, USA

Shillito, M. Larry (1994) Advanced QFD : Linking technology to market & company needs.
Wiley

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) 10

Moskowitz, H., Kim, K.J. (1997) QFD Optimizer: A novice friendly quality function deployment
decision support system for optimizing product designs
Computers & Industrial Engineering, vol.32, no.3, 641- 655

Zhang, X.P., Bode, J., Ren S.J. (1997) Neural Networks In Quality Function Deployment.
Computers & Industrial Engineering, 1996, vol.31, no.3-4, 669-673

World Wide Web

URL (correct at 24.11.97) Description

http://www.nauticom.net/www/qfdi/ QFD Institute homepage

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) 11