Quality Function Deployment

To design a product well, a design teams needs to know what it is they are designing, and what the end-users will expect from it. A systematic approach to design based on a close awareness of customer desires, coupled with the integration of corporate functional groups. Quality Function Deployment

Developed in Japan in the mid 1970s Introduced in USA in the late 1980s Toyota was able to reduce 60% of cost to bring a new car model to market Toyota decreased 1/3 of its development time Used in cross functional teams Companies feel it increased customer satisfaction Information on QFD….

Who are the customers What they want the product to do To whom is the what important What is the competition How to measure the product’s ability to satisfy customer requirements Relate customer’s requirements to engineering specifications How much is good enough; setting target values Identify relationships between engineering requirements QFD Method Builds the House of Quality

Quality must be designed into the product, not inspected into it. Quality can be defined as meeting customer needs and providing superior value. 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 Customer Focused Development with QFD

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”. Generate a weighting factor for each requirement Each “customer” assigns a weight of importance to each requirement on a scale of 1 to 5. Quality Function Deployment

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 Capturing The Voice Of The Customer

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. Capturing the “Voice of the Customer” with QFD

All customer segments are represented: all of the major, targeted consumer and distribution segments, as well as internal customers of the design (e.g., product marketing and design engineering). Customer product preference survey results. Customer satisfaction survey results. Customer complaints, suggestions, and concerns. Customer warranty information from field service. Customer focus group findings. Competitive product analysis. Product teardown analysis. Product pricing study results. Voice of the Customer — Input for QFD

Normal requirements are assumed and do not need to be incorporated into the house of quality Expected requirements – desired features Exciting requirements (features) – not expected. A “wow” factor. Over time, requirements transition excitement -> expected -> normal Collecting Customer Requirements

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. Quality Function Deployment

QFD uses some principles from Concurrent Engineering in that cross-functional teams are involved in all phases of product development.  Each of the four phases in a QFD process uses a matrix to translate customer requirements from initial planning stages through production control Quality Function Deployment

QFD is a customer-driven planning process to guide the design, manufacturing, and marketing of goods. Through QFD, every design, manufacturing, and control decision is made to meet the expressed needs of customers. It uses a type of matrix diagram to present data and information. Under QFD, all operations of a company are driven by the voice of the customer, rather than by edicts of top management or the opinions or desires of design engineers. So….What is QFD?

Reduce time required to translate customer requirements into product specifications   QFD reduces the time for new product development. Improved communication and teamwork between all constituencies in the production process How does a QFD reduce costs versus traditional product design approaches?

QFD Listen to the Customer (Decide what’s important) Develop and manufacture towards measured goals (Minimise variations) Optimise products and processes (Proactive) Conventional product development Specification of internal demands (Everything is important) Develop and manufacture against specified tolerances (Stay within the tolerances) Passive reaction to Customers problems The difference between QFD and conventional product development

How does a QFD reduce costs versus traditional product design approaches? Conventional QFD Number of changes Production start -24 month -15 month -3 month +3 month

BEFORE AND AFTER QFD BEFORE QFD AFTER QFD PLANNING DESIGN REDESIGN MANUFACTURING REDESIGN MANUFACTURING DESIGN PLANNING BENEFITS

House of Quality Interrelationships Technical Requirements Voice of the Customer Relationship between Customer Needs and Technical Requirement Importance of Traits to Customer Assessment of Competition Customer Needs Technical Targets

Customer Evaluation Relationships Among Engineering Characteristics Customer Evaluation Customer Evaluation Identifying performance measure conflicts Engineering Characteristics Record Performance measures for each customer demanded quality Relative Importance Record customer performance ratings for your Similar product and competitors’ products Customer Attributes Importance for each demanded quality needs to be determined Relationship between demanded customer qualities and Engineering Performance The first step is to list all the demanded qualities at the same level of abstraction Technical benchmarking Units Units Technical Difficulty associated with achieving Targets/improvements and importance of technical characteristics Engineering Influence Customer Qualities Objective Measures Setting Technical Targets Determining Important Characteristics Targets Targets Targets Technical Difficulty Technical Difficulty Importance Importance

Step 1: Identify customer needs/requirements. Step 2: Develop a listing of technical requirements along the roof of the house. Step 3: Demonstrate the relationship between the customer requirements and technical design elements. Step 4: Perform a competitive assessment of the customer requirements Step 5: Evaluate technical requirements of competitions and develop targets Steps in QFD

Step 6: Organizational Difficulty Ratings Step 7: Evaluate technical requirements of competitive products and develop targets. Step 8: Absolute Importance Step 9: Select technical requirements to be deployed in the remainder of the process Step 10: Analyze the Matrix Steps in QFD

A House of Quality graphically displays customer requirements, regulatory requirements, customer importance ratings, customer competition ratings, technical requirements, and more… House of Quality

Step 1: Identify customer needs/requirements The voice of the customer is the primary input to the QFD process. What is the most critical and most difficult task of QFD? The most critical and most difficult step of the process is to capture the essence of the customer’s comments. The customer’s own words are vitally important in reinventing misinterpretation by designers and engineers. Listening to customers can open the door to creative opportunities. 

Customer product preference survey results. Customer satisfaction survey results. Customer complaints, suggestions, and concerns. Customer warranty information from field service. Customer focus group findings. Competitive product analysis. Product teardown analysis. Product pricing study results. Voice of the Customer — Input for QFD

Step 1: Identify customer needs/requirements • Customer Requirements are generally reproduced in the customers’ own words. • Why? • Experienced users of the house of quality try to preserve customers’ phrases and even cliches – knowing that they will be translated simultaneously by product planners, design engineers, manufacturing engineers, and salespeople. • What does a customer really mean by “quiet” or “easy”? • Designers’ words and inferences may correspond even less to customers’ actual views and can therefore mislead teams into tackling problems customers consider unimportant.

Customer needs or requirements are stated on the left side of the matrix These are organized by category based on Importance. Step 1: Identify customer needs/requirements • Not all product or service requirements are known to the customer, so the team must document requirements that are dictated by management or regulatory standards that the product must adhere to.

Address the unspoken needs (exciting requirements). 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. Step 1: Identify customer needs/requirements

Determine what market segments will be analyzed and identify who the customers are. Gather information from customers on the requirements they have for the product or service. Step 1: Identify customer needs/requirements

Establish product requirements or product 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 Step 2 – Establish Product Requirements/Product Characteristics

Step 2 – Establish Product Requirements/Product Characteristics • Product characteristics are design characteristics that describe the customer requirements as expressed in the language of the designer and engineer. • PCs describe what a product ought to be, but not what the product ought to do. • Along the top of the house of quality, the design team lists those product characteristics (PC) that are likely to affect one or more of the customer attributes

The technical requirements are attributes about the product or service that can be measured and benchmarked against the competition. Step 2 – Establish Product Requirements/Product Characteristics

Look at what’s been done before 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. Step 2 – Establish Product Requirements/Product Characteristics

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 breakthrough’s 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. Step 2 – Establish Product Requirements/Product Characteristics

As the team defines the technical requirements, a determination may be made as to the direction of movement for each descriptor. Step 2 – Establish Product Requirements/Product Characteristics

Relationships among features and functions are shown in the top graph diagram and the strength of each pair of relationships is also indicated. 3 3 9 3 – 9 – 3 9 – 3 3 3 9 – 9 9 3 – 3 9 9 – 3 9 3 9 9 3 Product Functions Design Features Function 1 Function 2 Function 3 F e a t u r e A F e a t u r e B F e a t u r e C F e a t u r e D F e a t u r e E F e a t u r e F F e a t u r e G F e a t u r e H F e a t u r e I Design features and functional interactions:

Determine interactions between technical requirements or product 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. Interactions At the Roof

Examine how each of the technical descriptors impact each other. The team should document strong negative relationships between technical descriptors and work to eliminate physical contradictions. Interactions At the Roof

What questions do the relationships identified in the roof of the house answer? These relationships indicate answers to questions such as “How does one change of product characteristics affect others?’ and assessment of trade-offs between characteristics. The roof matrix also facilitates necessary engineering trade-offs. Interactions At the Roof

Engineers may add a row that indicates the degree of technical difficulty, showing in their own terms how hard or easy it is to make a change. By comparing weighted characteristics to actual component costs, creative design teams set priorities for improving components. Such information is important when cost cutting is a goal. Interactions At the Roof

Why must the product characteristics be measurable? • They must be measurable, since the output is controlled and compared to objective targets. • Product characteristicsare the “hows” by which the company will respond to the ‘whats’-customer requirements. • Product characteristics should describe the product in measurable terms and should directly affect customer perceptions. • The thickness of a sheet metal product is a part characteristic that the customer is unlikely to perceive directly. It affects customers only by influencing the weight of the product and other engineering characteristics, like “resistance to deformation in a crash”

Customer requirements are listed down the left column; Product characteristicsare written across the top. In the matrix itself, symbols indicate the degree of relationship in a manner similar to that used in the roof of the House of Quality. Step 3 – Develop a relationship matrix between the customer requirements and the product characteristics

What is the purpose of the relationships matrix? The purpose of the relationship matrix is to show whether the final technical requirements adequately address customer requirements. The strength of a given relationship in the matrix is based on 3 criteria. What are these criteria? This assessment is usually based on: Expert experience Customer responses Controlled experiments. Step 3 – Develop a relationship matrix between the customer requirements and the product 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? Step 3 – Develop a relationship matrix between the customer requirements and the product characteristics

Product Requirements Symbol Alignment Matrix Customer-to-Product Requirements Need — Do Relationships Relationship Strong Moderate Weak Weight Market Segment 9 3 1 Customer Category Customer Identification Customer Importance Voice of the Customer Customer Satisfaction Competitive Feature Analysis Technical Targets Develop a relationship matrix between the customer requirements and the technical requirements

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. Step 3 – Develop a relationship matrix between the customer requirements and the product characteristics • Sum for each Design Requirement (CUSTOMER IMPORTANCE) x (RELATIONSHIP)

On a scale from 1 – 5, customers then rate the importance of each requirement. This number will be used later in the relationship matrix. Understanding how customers rate the competition can be a tremendous competitive advantage. Ask customers how your product or service rates in relation to the competition. Customer needs and importance ratings:

Shows the strength of the relationship between technical requirements and customers needs? Step 3 – Develop a relationship matrix between the customer requirements and the product characteristics • Relationships can either be weak, moderate, or strong

This step identifies importance ratings for each customer requirement and evaluates existing products for each of them. Customer importance ratings represent the areas of greatest interest and highest expectations as expressed by the customer. Step 4: Perform a competitive assessment of the customer requirements