What is QFD?
"Time was when a man could order a pair of shoes directly from the cobbler. By
measuring the foot himself and personally handling all aspects of manufacturing,
the cobbler could assure the customer would be satisfied," lamented
Dr. Yoji Akao,
one of the founders of QFD, in his private lectures.
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) was developed to bring this personal
interface to modern manufacturing and business. In today's industrial society,
where the 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.
QFD is:
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Understanding Customer Requirements
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Quality Systems Thinking + Psychology +
Knowledge/Epistemology
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Maximizing Positive Quality That Adds Value
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Comprehensive Quality System for Customer Satisfaction
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Strategy to Stay Ahead of The Game
As a quality system that implements elements of Systems
Thinking with elements of Psychology and Epistemology (knowledge), QFD
provides a system of comprehensive development process for:
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Understanding 'true' customer needs from the customer's
perspective
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What 'value' means to the customer,
from the customer's perspective
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Understanding how customers or end
users become interested, choose, and are satisfied
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Analyzing how do we know the needs
of the customer
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Deciding what features to include
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Determining what level of
performance to deliver
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Intelligently linking the needs of
the customer with design, development, engineering, manufacturing, and service
functions
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Intelligently linking Design for
Six Sigma (DFSS) with the front end Voice of Customer analysis and the entire
design system
QFD is a comprehensive quality system that
systematically links the needs of the customer with various business
functions and organizational processes, such as marketing, design,
quality, production, manufacturing, sales, etc., aligning the entire
company toward achieving a common goal.
It does so by seeking both spoken and unspoken needs,
identifying positive quality and business opportunities, and translating
these into actions and designs by using transparent analytic and
prioritization methods, empowering organizations to exceed normal
expectations and provide a level of unanticipated excitement that
generates value.
The QFD methodology can be used for
both tangible products and non-tangible services, including manufactured goods,
service industry, software products, IT projects, business process development,
government, healthcare, environmental initiatives, and many other applications.
Read more about QFD...
QFD and Six Sigma in Service Industry
QFD for Service and Information Economy
QFD in the Public Sector
QFD Security Deployment
Courtesy of Glenn
Mazur
www.mazur.net
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