Quality Function Deployment (Qfd)

Click here (http://www.qfdi.org) to explore the QFD Institute website and summarize what QFD does for the firm. What advantages does it offer? How does it effectively capture the “Voice of the Customer?” What might be a couple of drawbacks of QFD?

Quality Function Deployment QFD) prioritizes customer demands and customer needs and translates these needs into actions and designs such as technical characteristics and specifications in order to maximize customer satisfaction. QFD was developed to bring this personal interface to manufacturing and business. The reason for that is in today's industrial society, there is growing distance between producers and users is a concern. QFD links the needs of the customer (end user) with design, development, engineering, manufacturing, and service functions.

It effectively captures the “Voice of the Customer” by providing a system of comprehensive development process for the following:

• From customer’s perspective:

o Understanding 'true' customer needs

o Understanding what 'value' means to the customer

o Understanding how customers or end users become interested, choose, and are satisfied

• Analyzing how do firms know the needs of the customer

• Deciding what features to include

• Determining what level of performance to deliver

• Linking the needs of the customer with design, development, engineering, manufacturing, and service functions

• Linking Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) with the front end Voice of Customer analysis and the entire design system

QFD may have some limitations such as the need for data to be very accurate and in terms of customer’s expectations, they need to be aligned with the technical capabilities and the fact that they change rapidly.

QFD is in line with the Product Protocol that is in the text book, which means what is the final package of output from the development system, what benefits or performance will the product deliver to the customer, and what changes will the marketing...