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In 2010, the QFD Institute will convene its 22nd
Symposium on QFD, in conjunction with the
16th International Symposium on QFD.
Having attended and reviewed all the case studies of these
conferences, I have begun to assemble of list of "don'ts"
which may explain why some companies fail at QFD.
Based on some recent case studies and emails I reviewed,
here are some of the common themes. I hope you will find
these tips useful in your NPD projects.
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House of Quality
"Our QFD training did not address our product..."
 Most
lean sigma programs equate QFD and House of Quality
(only) or a four matrix approach. This is common
among programs that are booked trained, since most
non-Japanese language books on QFD only cover this
approach.
Historically, this 4-phase model was truncated in
the 1980s by U.S. auto parts manufacturers looking
for a simpler QFD than the Comprehensive approach
developed by Drs. Mizuno and Akao, the founders of
QFD. As one of the few people outside Japan to learn
QFD directly from both these men, I can assure you
that the 4-Phase model was the exception, not the
rule. It was based on a reliability deployment (not
quality deployment) study done at Fuji-Xerox to
address a specific component problem.
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So, for component manufacturers addressing
reliability issues, this is a reasonable approach.
However, if that is not your business model, you
make systems and end products, you are in the
service, processing, or software industries, being
trained in this model is sub-optimal.
In today's resource constrained businesses, the most
efficient approach I have found is to custom tailor
the QFD process to meet the needs of your product
development process, taking into account management
style, product, customers, competitors, and other
factors.
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"How do I use 'house 2' or 'house 3?' "
 Continuing
the above discussion on the 4-Phase QFD model, note
that the House of Quality is just a specific kind of
L-matrix, one of the 7 Management and Planning
tools. It is just one instance of one tool out of
many. Because the matrix is such a powerful tool
and/or owning to superficial QFD understanding, some
trainers try to make it do too much. (Like the
movie, "the matrix is everything.") There are other,
often more efficient tools, that can do the job of
the matrix more quickly. Encourage your lean sigma
trainer to go beyond book-learned QFD and introduce
you modern QFD tools, such as Blitz QFD®.
"My matrix got so large, we did not have time to
finish it..."
The function of the L-matrix in QFD is to show the
relationships between two discrete data sets, and
then transfer the priorities from one set to the
other. Matrices can grow too large when we violate
this first function by having more than two discrete
data sets.
"When relating the rows and columns in the
matrix, we could not easily agree on how much weight
to enter into the cell..."
There are numerous ways to improve this. First,
agree on a standard format of which data set will go
in the rows and which in the columns. In many
Japanese examples, more attention was given paid to
picturing the flow of data from one matrix to
another and so rows and columns were often switched
to make the flow charts easier to follow. Another
issue is the number of levels of weights - generally
for a subjective decision, the traditional 3 levels
is insufficient to yield an accurate assessment.
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"'Whats' and 'Hows' confuse me..."
 Me
, too. Originally, the expressions were mnemonic
shortcuts created by one of the first QFD learners
in the US auto industry in the 1980s. Initially
helpful, the terms were later embedded in QFD
software applications and books and have been a key
source of confusion for experienced as well as new
QFD practitioners.
The terms originally referred to the rows and
columns of a matrix: What was to be delivered in the
rows; and How to deploy it further in the columns.
In this way, it is not wrong. What made it confusing
was that customer needs (the rows of the House of
Quality) were confused with "what" the customer
wants the product to do (which is really product
function) and "how" the product will do it (which is
really enabling technology).
A better way to describe the rows of the House of
Quality should be "why" the customer wants the
product and a better way to describe the columns
should be "what" the product should do. In other
words, the "what-how" matrix should be actually a
later deployment, not in the House of Quality.
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Math
"Explain why the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)
is more precise..."
Dr. Thomas Saaty, creator of
AHP,
received the 2007 Akao Prize for his contribution to
QFD, and his work details why the eigenvector better
models human judgment than other approaches. Here
are two key points: People can make better judgments
with words than with numbers and when comparing two
issues that are close in value. Thus, paired
comparisons applied to a hierarchy can produce an
eigenvector that closely approximates the relative
importance of the items being compared.
"Why wasn't AHP used in early QFD case studies,
if it was better?"
QFD was formalized in the 1960s in Japan and the
matrices added in the early 1970s. Supercomputers
used to do the eigenvector calculations and were not
easily available to quality engineers and personal
computers (PCs) did not hit the market until the
1980s. When AHP software for PCs became available,
Dr. Akao and his colleagues immediately recommended
replacing the ordinal rating scales used in early
QFD. Unfortunately, this was after the U.S. auto
industry had begun publishing the old math in books
and articles, which were then spread around the
world. Those of us who continued to study QFD with
Dr. Akao and his colleagues also made the change and
this is what we teach today in modern QFD.
"If we use AHP to get customer importance
ratings, must we also use AHP for other math
calculations in QFD?"
AHP gives more precision than ordinal ratings. If
you custom-tailored QFD process and then use
matrices to deploy customer needs downstream (most
QFDs will not need matrices at the start), take care
not to dilute this precision by re-introducing
ordinal ratings in the relationship matrix,
competitive benchmarking, FMEA, and elsewhere,
especially when it is actually easier to employ AHP.
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Customer Needs
"Lots of terms are used these days, such as voice
of customer, customer needs, wants vs. needs,
demanded quality, etc. What works best for QFD?"
When using advanced tools such as QFD and AHP,
domain expertise is necessary to get accurate
prioritizations. Thus, for customers to accurately
prioritize customer needs, they need to have deep
domain knowledge or subject matter expertise.
Customer needs reflect the discrete data set where
they are experts.
"How does the gemba help get customer needs?"
There
are many sources of raw "voice of customer data"
such as interviews, surveys, field reports, etc.
Gemba is a source unique to QFD. In the Japanese
quality movement, gemba usually refers to our
company's manufacturing floor, a source of
information about processes and the root cause of
failures. This is sufficient for existing product
defects, however, the power of QFD lies in assuring
the successful quality of future produces BEFORE the
production gemba begins, i.e. in design. Thus, we go
to the customer's gemba to identify what
failures they have in their processes, as well as
successes that must be protected during redesign.
"Are some gembas more important than others?"
Gemba
visits require resources and therefore we must
strategically plan to do the most important visits
first. Gemba planning not only requires
identifying who to visit, but the ideal conditions
to collect the best data. This is serious part of
modern Blitz QFD®.
"Who should prioritize the customer needs?"
As
described above, for accurate prioritization, domain
knowledge is required. Customer needs are best known
by -- customers! Not the QFD team. There are
actually some books and articles that erroneously
recommend the QFD team do the prioritization.
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These and many more causes of QFD failure have been
corrected in the past decade and are routinely
taught in both the public and in-company QFD Green
Belt® and QFD Black Belt® courses. Application white
papers and case studies are readily available to
those who attend the annual QFD Symposium.
New product development is one of the most valuable
business processes a company can have. It keeps the
product pipeline flowing with innovative products to
enrich the lives and productivity of our customers.
It is the engine that continuously drives profit
into the organization.
It has been estimated that over 80% of new products
fail in the market, but QFD can improve that by
focusing our best efforts, first on what matters
most to customers. QFD is thus too important to be
left to antiquated models borrowed from other
industries and other times. Your QFD must be
yours, must be fresh, must be done properly in
order to assure maximum customer satisfaction with
the most efficient effort. Don't you agree your
customers deserve no less!
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Glenn Mazur
Executive Director
QFD Institute
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