|
"The industry used to talk about kaizen, or continuous
improvement, but that's no longer enough to survive in today's
environment," Jose Maria Alapont, CEO of Federal-Mogul, was quoted
saying recently during the Supplier Panel discussion at the 30th
Automotive News World Congress*.
Amid news of US domestic carmakers' woes, most analysts agree that the
Big Three have made a significant gain in quality and productivity in
recent years. In J.D. Power's consumer satisfaction survey and
Consumer Report ratings, their models now rank in the middle range
with some faring higher among all car manufacturers, unlike a decade
ago when they desolately monopolized the bottom rankings. Some of
their plants regularly boast some of the highest productivity. Yet
their overall market share continues to erode in favor of foreign car
makers.
No doubt, many factors are involved with the current demise of
Detroit: labor issues, increasing energy costs, healthcare and pension
liabilities, overcapacity, new levels of global competition,
miscalculation of strategy, etc. Among all, the most significant we
thought is that
this narrowed gap in vehicle quality has made the conventional product
attributes obsolete:
quality and productivity are no longer the differentiators, at least
in this industry sector.
This was, in fact, one of pivotal points that Dr. Akao made when he
used Kano's model of expected vs. attractive quality to explain the
theory of QFD, although not every QFD person appreciates it. That is,
quality is a moving target and it is often invisible; what was once
attractive quality may become expected quality over time when all
competitors offer the same level of performance.
The latter is extremely important not only to your product development
but also to the way you practice QFD. Many in the auto industry leaned
a "kindergarten" approach to QFD some 20 years ago because they were
rushed by the tremendous pressure from Japanese competition. Later,
other industries and countries followed this truncated form of
practice without realizing its limited application. (Early models were
called the Four-phase QFD, A-1 matrix, or House of Quality.)
Now we see that what was once a competitive level of QFD practice is
no longer effective, and is not producing the desired result as we see
in the auto industry example.
"If you have the product, you can get the price for it," was asserted
by another Congress speaker, Ron Harbor, president of Harbour
Consulting. He pointed out lackluster products and pricing issues are
the major reason for today's domestic automakers' decline. "Domestic
carmakers won't be able to stop the decline in market share until they
build more compelling vehicles" for today's consumers.*
Modern QFD now
has the powerful front end needed to fully analyze customer needs,
both spoken and unspoken, and quickly deliver solutions to the
customer's most pressing demands.
Isn't it time to update and upgrade your QFD knowledge to Modern
QFD in order to better prepare your organization for 21st century
product and service development?
|
[*Quote source: Automotive News, Jan. 23, 2006]
|
|
|
