Quality Function Deployment (QFD) | Business Improvement Architects

Overview

Quality Function Deployment is a system for translating customer requirements into organizational requirements at each stage from research and product development to engineering and manufacturing to marketing, sales and distribution. It is the act of taking the voice of the customer all the way through product development to delivery. It is not just a quality tool, but also an important planning tool for introducing new products and services and upgrading existing products and services. Quality function deployment (QFD) is customer driven, reduces implementation time, promotes teamwork and provides documentation. QFD is can be effectively used to introduce or improve both products and services.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a technique used to translate a customer’s requirements into internal processes by graphically illustrating the linkages between the two in a matrix diagram. The data obtained from customer research, benchmarking and market assessment is used as the starting point to determine the customer requirements, or “what needs to be done”, part of the matrix. The “how things are done” part of the matrix comes from the processes, systems, or other technical descriptions that are used within the organization to meet customer needs.

Session Focus

You will be immersed in a simulation of the Quality Function Deployment planning process that will challenge you and demonstrate what’s involved in creating a product or service that delivers what the customer really wants. You will gain skills for researching, analysing, establishing and documenting customer requirements. You will learn how to capture and prioritize customer requirements in accordance with relative importance to customers and perceptions of competitive performance. And you will learn how to use QFD to convert the benefits that customers desire into measurable characteristics of a product, process, service or strategy.

Who Should Attend?

Management and employees who need to understand how this planning tool can be used to introduce new products and services and/or upgrade existing products and services by taking the Voice of the Customer all the way from idea identification through product development to production and the marketplace.

Key Outcomes

• Learn the meaning, history and benefits of Quality Function Deployment.
• Translate the consumer requirements into the product or service requirements.
• Integrate competitive information effectively.
• Understand the meaning of quality and how to drive it into the system.
• Know the customer’s requirements and expectations to determine the expected quality and the quality demand by building Quality Function Deployment Matrix House.
• Understand what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a process as a customer.
• Translate customer requirements into degrees of importance.
• Determine the design requirements.
• Analyze customer ratings from past experiences.
• Prioritize all customer requirements.
• Prioritize resource requirements.
• Identify items that can be acted upon.
• Identify the requirements that must be built into the new and/or improved product or service.
• Communicate with the customers throughout the life cycle of the product and service development.
• Finalize the “House of Quality” matrix.
• Integrate QFD into the New Product Development process.

Course Duration

1 Day