Proceedngs of 2nd National Conference nME 2010

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) for Product Design

Mr. Mahesh. J. Patil
Assistant Professor, Production Engineering Department,
Bharati Vidyapeeth University,
College Of Engineering, Pune-411043.
email: [email protected]

Abstract
This Paper helps to understand the present Scenario of QFD in Industries. Quality Function
Deployment enables the designers and planners to decide upon the product Design, after
getting the voice of customer from the market and they can put large emphasis on the
criteria's stated by the customer .The process gives rating to the design criteria's given by
the customers and can help to identify the most important ones. Thus the Product
manufactured is according to the customer requirements.

--.. Key words: Quality Function Deployment, Voice of Customer, House of 'Quality.

Introduction: . .
Quality function Deployment (QFD) is a planning tool used to fulfill customer exp~ctati09~:
It is a disciplined approach to product development. An or~anizatiohtha~j ~on:¢riy
implements QFD can improve engineering Knowledge, productivity and. qualityand reduce
costs.. product development time and engineering changes. It focuses customer ot
expectations or requirements, often referred to as. the voice of customer. It is employed to
translate customer expectations, in terms of specific requirements, into directions and actions.
Here Conflicting characteristics or requirements are identified early in the QFD process and
can be resolved before production.
QFD was initialized by Dr.Mizuno, professor emeritus of the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
The first application of QFD was at Mitsubishi, Heavy Industries Ltd.,in Kobe
Shipyard,Japan,in 1972.After case study development, refinement and training.QFD was
successfully implemented in the production of mini Vans by Toyota. Using 1977 as a base, a
20% reduction in startup costs was reported in the launch of the new van in October 1979,a
38% reduction by November I982,and a cumulative 61% reduction by
ApriI1984.Dr.Clausing of Xerox 'introduced QFD first in United States in 1984.1t can be
pplied to any manufacturing and service industries.

Voice of Customer:
The QFD process reduces the overall cycle time in bringing the product to market. The
driving force behind QFD is that the customer dictates the attributes of a productCustomer
satisfaction like quality is defined as meeting or exceeding customer expectations. Words
used by the customers to describe their expectations are often referred as the voice of the
customer. Sources for determining customer expectations are focus groups, surveys
complaints, consultants, standards and federal regulations.

Organisation of Information:
The information being collected as the voice of customer requires to be organized
properly.The various methods udes for the same are affinity diagram, interrelationship
diagrams,tree diagrams and cause and effect diagrams.The affinity diagram is mostly used
for QFD applications.

Department of Mechanical Engineering, PDEA's A G, Awate College of Engineering, Hadapsar, Pune 457

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 Proceedings of 2nd National Conference TIME 2010

Affinity Diagram:
The affinity diagram is a tool that gathers a large amount of data and subsequently organizes
the data into groupings based on their natural interrelationships.These are to be used when
thoughts are too widely dispersed. The Procedure affinity diagram is as follows:
1. Phrase the Objective.
2.· Record all responses.
3. Group all the responses.
4. Organize groups in an affinity diagram.

House of Quality:
The primary planning tool used in QFD is the house of quality.The house of quality translates
the voice of customer into design requirements that meet specific target values and matches
those against how an organization will meet those requirements. The structure of QFD can be
thought of as a framework of house. The parts of house are described below:
• Exterior walls: Customer Requirements and prioritized customer requirements.
• Interior walls: Relationship between customer requirements and technical descriptors
or engineering Characteristics.
• Roof: Interrelationship between technical descriptors.
• Floor: Technical Descriptors.
• Foundation: Prioritized technical descriptors.

Steps to Built the House of Quality:

Step I-List Customer Requirements (Whats):

The list of goals/objectives is often referred as the WHATs that a customer needs or expects
in a particular product. They form the left side exterior wall of the house. The requirements
can be categorized into primary, secondary and tertiary. The primary list is usually vague and
very general in nature. Further definition is accomplished by defining a new, more detailed
list of secondary customer requirements and if the details are not satisfied they are further
rooted as tertiary.
Step 2-List technical descriptors or engineering characteristics. (HOW):
The goal of house of quality is to design or change the design of a product in a way that
meets or exceeds the customer expectations. Now the roofforms the technical descriptors that
talk about HOW the requirements are to be satisfied. The technical descriptors are Further
subdivided into Primary, secondary and tertiary .The secondary and tertiary descriptors
explain the primary descriptors in more details.This process is similar to refining marketing
specifications into system-level engineering specifications.

Step 3-Develop a Relationship Matrix.Between Whats and Hows.

The inside or interior walls of the house are called the relationship matrix is filled next by the
QFD team. The relationship matrix is used to represent graphically the degree of influence
between each technical descriptor and each customer requirement.This step being done
earlier in product development reduces development cycle.!t is common to use symbols to
represent the degree of relationship between the customer requirements and technical
descriptors.Later numerical values are also given.These weights will be used later for
determining trade-off situations for conflicting characteristics and determining an absolute
weight at the bottom of the matrix.

Department of Mechanical Engineering, PDEA's A G. Awate College of Engineering, Hadapsar, Pune 458
 Proceedngs of 2nd National Conference TIME 2010

Relationship Symbol Value

A Solid Circle represents strong relationship.

A Single Circle represents medium relationship. 0 3

• 9

A triangle represents a weak relationship. /:). I

Blank Cell represents a no relationship -- --
Table no.1
After relationship matrix has been completed ,it is evaluated for empty rows or columns.An
empty row indicates customer requirement not been addressed by any of the technical
descriptors and a empty column indicates that a particular technical descriptor does not affect
any of the customer requirements and may be removed.

Step 4-Develop an Interrelationship Matrix Between Hows:

The roof of the house of quality, called the correlation matrix, is used to identify any
interrelationships between each of the technical descriptors. The correlation matrix ia a
triangular table attached to the technical descriptors. For evaluation purpose the symbols and
values used are given in table no.2.

Relationship Symbol Value

A Solid Circle represents strong positive relationship.

A Single Circle represents medium relationship. 0

• +9

+3
A cross represents a negative relationship. X -1
An asterisk represents a strong negative relationship * -9
Table 00.2
The diagram allows the user to identify which technical descriptors support one another and
which are in conflict.

Step 5-Competitive Assessments:

The competitive assessment is pair of weighted tables (or graphs) that depicts item how
competitive products compare with current organization products. The competitive
assessment tables are separated into two categories, customer assessment and technical
assessment.
• Customer competitive assessment:
The customer competitive assessment makes up a block of columns corresponding to
each customer requirement in the house of quality on the right side of the relationship
matrix. The numbers 1 through 5 are listed in the competitive evaluation column to
indicate a rating of 1 for worst and 5 for the best.
• Technical competitive assessment.
The technical competitive assessment makes up a block of rows corresponding to
each technical descriptor in the house of quality beneath the relationship matrix. The
products are evaluated for each technical descriptors.For evaluation purpose the test
data are converted to the numbers I through 5,which are listed in the competitive
evaluation row to indicate a rating, 1 for worst and 5 for best.

Department of Mechanical Engineering, PDEA's A. G. Awate College of Engineering, Hadapsar, Pune 459
 Proceedings of 2nd National Conference TIME 2010

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Figure No. L Addition of All Parameters in House of Quality

Step 6-Develop Prioritized Customer Requirements:

The prioritized customer requirements make up a block of columns corresponding to each
customer requirement in the house of quality on the right side of the customer competitive
assessment.These prioritized customer requirements contain columns for importance to
customer,target value,scale-up-factor,sales point and absolute weight .The Absolute weight is
the product of importance to customer ,scale-up-factor and sales point.
Step 7-Develop Prioritized Technical Descriptors:
The prioritized technical descriptors make up a block of rows corresponding to each technical
descriptors in the house of quality below technical competitive assessment. These prioritized
technical descriptors contain degree of technical difficulty, target values and absolute and
relative weights.The QFD team identifies technical descriptors that are most needed to fulfill
customer requirements and need improvement..

The QFD matrix is the basis for all future matrices needed for the QFD methods. Although
each house of quality chart now contains a large amount of information, it is still necessary to
refine the technical descriptors further until an actionable level of detail is achived.Often
more than one matrix will be needed depending on the complexity of the project.

Conclusion:
In Quality function deployment ,the house of quality is an effective management tool in
which customer expectations are used to drive the design process.Every QFD chart is a result
of the original customer requirements that are not lost through misinterpretations or lack of
communication

Department of Mechanical Engineering, PDEA's A. G. Awate College of Engineering, Hadapsar. Puna 460
 PrOCeedi"fls of 2nd National Conference TIME 2010

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edition,Published by Addison Wesley Longman (Singapore)pte.Ltd.

Department of Mechanical Engineering. PDEA's A. G. Awate College of Engineering. Hadapsar. Pune 461