Quality Function Deployment

INTRODUCTION

Quality must be designed into the product, not inspected into it. Quality can be defined as
meeting customer needs and providing superior value. This focus on satisfying the customer's
needs places an emphasis on techniques such as Quality Function Deployment to help
understand those needs and plan a product to provide superior value.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a structured approach to defining customer needs or
requirements and translating them into specific plans to produce products to meet those needs.
The "voice of the customer" is the term to describe these stated and unstated customer needs or
requirements. The voice of the customer is captured in a variety of ways: direct discussion or
interviews, surveys, focus groups, customer specifications, observation, warranty data, field
reports, etc. This understanding of the customer needs is then summarized in a product planning
matrix or "house of quality". These matrices are used to translate higher level "what's" or needs
into lower level "how's" - product requirements or technical characteristics to satisfy these needs.

The basic Quality Function Deployment methodology involves four basic phases that occur over
the course of the product development process. During each phase one or more matrices are
prepared to help plan and communicate critical product and process planning and design
information. This QFD methodology flow is represented below.