Quality Function

Deployment (QFD) and

House of Quality (HOQ)
Overview
• Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and House of Quality (HOQ) are structured
approaches for defining customer requirements and translating design
specifications and product control characteristics into a planning matrix.
• using QFD allows the charting of customer wants and technical hows, which
results in a better understanding of design relationships.
• It is a planning process for products and services that starts with the voice of the
customer.
• Basically, it enables people to think together. You can also include a competitive
analysis.
• People on your team will be better aligned and able to think together toward a
solution.
Why Use Quality Function
Deployment?
• Effectively communicate customer requirements and strategically
prioritize efforts throughout the organization.
• Is a customer-driven process for planning products and services.
• Helps to identify important parameters to include in the design.
• Allows you to compare the design parameters with competitive
products.
• Reduces the development time and is cost-effective.
Importance of Quality Function
Deployment (QFD) and House of
Quality (HOQ)
• Yoji Akao first developed Quality Function Deployment in Japan in
1966.
• QFD helps incorporate all the customer needs into the final product in
the early stages of the design phase.
• Furthermore, it is a planning tool to determine the key areas in which
the effort should focus in relation to our technical capabilities.
Four primary phases of QFD – Product
development steps

Product planning Product design

Process control
Process planning
(production planning)
Product planning:

Identify customer requirements.

Translate VOC into design specifications or product control characteristics as a

planning matrix.

Prioritize requirements.

Evaluate competition and prioritize requirements.

Product design:

Generate design ideas or concepts.

Translate the outputs of the product planning phase into individual part details
that define part characteristics.

Identify product risks.

Define the product specifications.

Process Planning

Define the product development process and establish critical

component parameters.

Establish critical process controls.

Create a manufacturing process flowchart and document process

parameters (or target values).
Process
control
(production
planning)
• Define the production
requirements for each
component/operation.
• Establish inspection and test
methods.
• Define performance indicators
to monitor the production
process.
Steps in
Developing House
of Quality (HOQ)?

• Step 1: Customer Requirements –

“Voice of the Customer”
• Step 2: Technical measures
• Step 3: Roof / Correlation Matrix
• Step 4: Relationship Matrix
• Step 5: Importance Rating
• Step 6: Competitive Evaluation
Step 1: Customer Requirements –
“Voice of the Customer”
• The first step in a HOQ is to determine the market segments and
identify prospective customers. The team collects customer
requirements and rates them on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the
most important and 1 being the least. Then they calculate the relative
importance.
Step 2: Technical measures
• Product requirements or technical
characteristics are aligned with the voice of
the customer. This step can be quite
difficult as it involves people working in
groups to skim out the variables that may
affect the customer requirement factors the
most. Parameters should be meaningful,
measurable, and global.
Step 3: Roof / Correlation Matrix
• The triangular “roof” matrix of the House of
Quality is to identify how the design
requirements interact with each other. It
helps the designers in the next phase of the
QFD project. The triangular matrix looks like
a house with a roof. The interrelations are
rated strong positive as “+ +,” whereas
strong negative as “- -“and blank for no
interrelation.
Step 4: Relationship Matrix
• Develop a correlation between customer
requirements (or the voice of the customer)
and the design characteristics or technical
requirements. Decide the symbols you want
to use to describe your desired grades.
These should be consistent and easy to
understand.
• The ranking system use is a set of symbols
for strong, medium, and weak relationships.
Each of the symbols represents a value of 9
for strong, 3 for medium, and 1 for weak.
Step 5: Importance Rating
• The Importance Rating is the result of calculating the total sum of
each column when multiplied by the customer importance factor. It
helps to determine where to assign the most resources. Then,
calculate the percentage of importance.
Step 6: Competitive Evaluation
• Competitive Evaluation helps to
understand competitor products that
fulfill customer requirements. It is a
good idea to ask customers how the
product or service rates are in relation
to the competition. Use surveys,
customer meetings, or focus
groups/clinics to obtain feedback.
Measure the satisfaction on a scale of 1
to 5, where 1 is highly dissatisfied and 5
is highly satisfied.
Example of House of Quality (HOQ)
• Example: We pick a car on which we are going to perform a house of
quality analysis. Since this is a hypothetical scenario, we will assume
all the data.
 Step 1: Customer Requirements-“Voice of
the Customer”
The next thing we do is assume the
The first thing you need to decide on is importance of each of these car
the customer requirements. characteristics, like what is important
For example, the minimum requirements according to the customers.
for a car might be: For example, let us rate all of these on a
Speed scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most
important and 1 being the least.
Safety
Speed-3
Low Fuel Consumption
Safety – 4
Reliable
Low Fuel Consumption- 3
Cheap
Reliable -3
Cheap-5
Step 2:
Technical
measures
• The next thing you need to do
is figure out the engineering
parameters that you need in
order to design the car.
• Weight
• Type of engine (power)
• Cost of production
• Expected lifetime
• Dimensions
• Acceleration speed
Step 3: Roof /
Correlation Matrix
• Similarly, you can now compare the
effects of changing one alternative on
the others. You can use symbols such
as ++ to represent a strongly positive
effect, + for a positive effect, 0 for no
effect,– for a negative, and – – for a
strongly negative effect.
Step 4:
Relationship
Matrix
• Now fill in all the boxes of the
design parameter columns. This is
the largest and most difficult part
of the design process.
• The ranking system use is a set of
symbols for strong, medium, and
weak relationships. Also, each
symbol represents a value of 9 for
strong, 3 for medium, and 1 for
weak.
Step 5: Importance Rating
• Sum up all of the values for each column of the engineering
parameters and write the sum at the bottom of the table. This is the
total importance of each individual engineering parameter.
• Then calculate the percentage of importance: You add them up and
then divide each importance value by the total to get the
percentages. This will help you decide which parameters you need
to focus on to meet the demands of the public.
• It will also shed some light on the relative importance of each
parameter in the design process.
• Furthermore, you can use as many designs as you want and test as
many alternatives as possible. It is all up to you! It all depends on
the available data, the amount of detail you want to go into, and
the extent to which you are willing to invest your time and
resources in this process.
• However, this process is very time-consuming if done manually, as
many decisions must be made. Hence, you have to decide which
factors are worth considering and which are not for one.
 • Use further add-ons to compare different alternatives in order to check
Step 6: how the different types of cars shape up with all the other alternatives.
Competitive • Use a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being highly dissatisfied and 5 being highly
satisfied. For each customer requirement, rank 1 to 5 to the competitors
Evaluation and also for our product (car).
• Also, use this add–on to check new designs that you make and learn to
select the best optimization for anything you want to make.
• This also helps identify discrepancies that you may have in your designs–
know what you are lacking in your design that the public requires.