CONTENTS AT A GLANCE

Topic Page
Product: The Pizza 3
Pizza Defined 3
Varieties in Pizza 3
Product Development: The Pizza 4
Ingredients and Varieties Selection 4
Quality Function Deployment 5
What’s QFD? 5
House of Quality 6
House of Quality of Pizza 9
Identify the customer wants 9
Identify how the product will satisfy the customer’s wants 10
Identify relations between our “hows” 12
Develop importance ratings 13
Evaluate competing products 14
Determine the technical attributes 14
Final HOQ of Pizza 15
Areas of Applications of QFD 16
References 17

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 PRODUCT: The PIZZA
Pizza Defined
Basically, Pizza is an oven-baked, flat,
disc shaped bread usually topped
with tomato
sauce and mozzarella (made from
domesticated water buffalo milk)
and then a selection of meats,
salamis, seafood, cheeses,
vegetables and herbs depending on
taste and culture. So, simply it means
that Pizza constitutes of (1) disc
shaped bread, (2) sauce, (3) meat, (4)
seafood, (5) vegetables and/or (6)
herbs. So, pizza should have many
varieties depending upon either the quantities of these components being added, or upon the
types of components being added according to the culture.

Varieties in Pizza
There are many varieties of pizza depending upon the eatable they are having, the method of
baking and size of pizza. Some with there ingredients are given below:

Neapolitan Pizza
(Fresh tomato, mozzarella, wheat flour, yeast, salt and water)

Lazio-styled Pizza
(Rectangular pizza, tomato, sliced mozzarella, olive oil)

White Pizza
(Omits tomatoes, substituting sour cream)

Pizza Romana
(Tomato, mozzarella, anchovies, oregano, oil)

Four Seasons Pizzas

(In this kind of pizza, ingredients are not gently mixed with each other; they just are placed on
the bread slices and send to oven for baking)

Four Cheese Pizzas

(Tomatoes, mozzarella, stracchino, fontina, gorgonzola)

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Sicilian-styled pizza
(Tomato sauce, cheese, garlic, basil, and oregano)

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: The PIZZA

Ingredients and Varieties Selection
We’ve seen above that pizza consists of many ingredients. Selection of ingredients depends
upon the type of pizza we want to offer our customers. So, now we’ll enlist the basic
ingredients required to make and cook pizza.

Salt &
Onions
Water
Sausages Cheese

Meat or
Olive Oil
Seafood

Bread
Tomatoes Pizza Slices

So, these 8 ingredients are necessary for pizza. We’ve got to either make them our self in our
factory or to purchase them from third-party seller. Fresh tomatoes, Meat and Olive Oil cannot
be stored for a long time, whereas custom-manufactured (artificial) Mozzarella, Salt, Cheese
and Bread Slices can be stored. Water is available everywhere and of course; it’s free of any
cost. Sausages are to be purchased from market according to culture and taste.

Now, we would discuss the way of making pizzas in our factory. Since we know there are a lot
of technical requirements for making pizzas, so we will first draw a chart for displaying the Pizza
Development Stages being involved in its making.

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 • Find out what the customer wants...
• Winning orders can be achieved through these wants...
Wants

• Do we have ability to make product in accrodance to the wants...

• How we would be able to do that?
How

• Product specifications are designed and discussed...

• Final product through HOQ is designed and fabricated...
Design

• Final market test...

• Evaluation for the product... Successful?
Test

The most important component in designing the product before its final launch is house of
quality of Quality Function Deployment.

QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT

What’s QFD?
Quality Function Deployment refers to both (1) determining what will satisfy the customer and
(2) translating those customer desires into the target design. So, in short we can say that:

“ ”
A process for determining customer requirements (customer
“wants”) and translating them into the attributes (the “hows”)
that each functional area can understand and act on.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a “method to transform user demands into design quality,
to deploy the functions forming quality, and to deploy methods for achieving the design quality
into subsystems and component parts, and ultimately to specific elements of the manufacturing
process.” as described by Dr. Yoji Akao, who originally developed QFD in Japan in 1966, when
the author combined his work in quality assurance and quality control points with function
deployment used in Value Engineering.

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QFD is designed to help planners focus on characteristics of a new or existing product or service
from the viewpoints of market segments, company, or technology-development needs. The
technique yields graphs and matrices.

QFD helps transform customer needs (the voice of the customer [VOC]) into engineering
characteristics (and appropriate test methods) for a product or service, prioritizing each
product or service characteristic while simultaneously setting development targets for product
or service.

House of Quality
One of the tools of QFD is the house of quality. The house of quality is a graphic technique for
defining the relationship between customer desires and product (or services). Defined as:

“ ”
House of Quality is a part of Quality Function Deployment process
that utilizes a planning matrix to relate customer “wants” to
“how” the firm is going to meet those “wants”.

House of Quality is a diagram, resembling a house, used for defining the relationship between
customer desires and the firm/product capabilities. It is a part of the Quality Function
Deployment (QFD) and it utilizes a planning matrix to relate what the customer wants to how a
firm (that produces the products) is going to meet those wants. It looks like a House with a
"correlation matrix" as its roof, customer wants versus product features as the main part,
competitor evaluation as the porch etc. It is based on "the belief that products should be
designed to reflect customers' desires and tastes". It also is reported to increase cross
functional integration within organizations using it, especially between marketing, engineering
and manufacturing.

Every successful company has always used data and information to help in its planning
processes. In planning a new product, engineers have always examined the manufacturing and
performance history of the current product. They look at field test data, comparing their
product to that of their competitor’s product. They examine any customer satisfaction
information that might happen to be available. Unfortunately, much of this information is often
incomplete. It is frequently examined as individual data, without comparison to other data that
may support or contradict it. By contrast, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) uses a matrix
format to capture a number of issues that are vital to the planning process. The House of
Quality Matrix is the most recognized and widely used form of this method. It translates
customer requirements, based on marketing research and benchmarking data, into an
appropriate number of engineering targets to be met by a new product design. Basically, it is

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the nerve center and the engine that drives the entire QFD process. According to Hauser and
Clausing, it is “a kind of conceptual map that provides the means for inter-functional planning
and communication.”

There are many different forms of the House of Quality, but its ability to be adapted to the
requirements of a particular problem make it a very strong and reliable system to use. Its
general format is made up of six major components. These include customer requirements,
technical requirements, a planning matrix, an interrelationship matrix, a technical correlation
matrix, and a technical priorities/benchmarks and targets section.

The basic structure is a table with "whats" as the labels on the left and "hows" across the top.
The roof is a diagonal matrix of "hows vs. hows" and the body of the house is a matrix of "whats
vs. hows". Both of these matrices are filled with indicators of whether the interaction of the
specific item is a strong positive, a strong negative, or somewhere in between. Additional
annexes on the right side and bottom hold the "Whys" (market research, etc.) and the "how
muches". Rankings based on the Whys and the correlations can be used to calculate priorities
for the hows. House of Quality analysis can also be cascaded, with "hows" from one level
becoming the "whats" of a lower level; as this progress the decisions get closer to the
engineering/manufacturing details.

The initial steps in forming the House of Quality include determining, clarifying, and specifying
the customers’ needs. These steps lay the foundation for a clearly defined venture and will
ensure a project or process is well thought out prior to any further development.

Clarifying Customer Needs

Customers buy benefits and producers offer features. This seems like a relatively simple notion;
however, unless customers and producers are perfectly in tune with one another, it may be
very difficult to anticipate these features, or each underlying benefit from each producer. It is
of utter importance to translate the wishes of each and every customer into some tangible
values that can be turned into engineering specifications.

Specifying the Customer Needs

After determining what items are most important to the customer, organizations must translate
them into particulate specifications. Nothing can be produced, serviced or maintained without
detailed specifications or some set of given standards. Each aspect of the desired item must be
clearly defined: Measurements must be defined, heights specified, torques stated, and weights
targeted.

To build the house of quality, basic seven steps are performed. These steps are:

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 Identify Customer wants.

What do prospective customers want in this product?

Identify how product will satisfy customer.

Identify specific product characteristics, features or attributes and show how
they will satisfy customer wants.

Identify relationships between firm's hows.

How do our hows tie together? What is the relationship between our two or
more hows?

Develop importance ratings.

Using the customer's importance ratings and weighs for the relationships in
matrix, compute our importance ratings.

Evaluate competing products.

How well do competing products meet customer wants? (entirely made on
research)

Determine the desirable technical attributes.

Desirable technical attributes, our performance and the competitor's
performance are determined and compared.

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Basic graphic diagram for any house of quality resembles this one:

Co-relationships

Technical

Competitive Assessment
requirements
Imp. Ratings

Customer Relationship
Requirements Matrix

Technical attributes

Technical evaluation

HOUSE OF QUALITY OF PIZZA

Identify the customer wants

Main features that any customer desires in a Pizza are:

Good taste
Low price
Low fats and healthy
Appetizing appearance
Fresh and Hot delivery
Good texture

Good taste
Taste is the first that that a customer demands in any eatable. Better the taste more will be the
demand for it. So, taste of Pizza should be well and good. It should taste fresh, hot and spicy all
the time.

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Low price
Price is the second most important factor according to the customers. Customer always tends
to purchase such an eatable that tastes good and costs low. So, there shouldn’t be any
compromise on taste while keeping the price as low as possible to meet the customer
requirements.

Low fats and Healthy

No one wants to get sick or becomes fat when eat something delicious and spicy. So, the pizza
being sold to the customers should consist of lower fats and it should be a healthy diet for
customer. This is the key for winning the customer’s order.

Appetizing appearance
First impression is the last impression even if it’s pizza. All customers want is to have a pizza
that could lower their appetite, keeping enough paper in their pocket for a second order. The
look of pizza should water one’s mouth. It should be looking delicious, appetizing and spicy
even if customer hasn’t yet tasted one.

Fresh and hot delivery

No one wants to have a staled pizza. Everyone wants a fresh and hot pizza, even if they’d
ordered it home. Quick-n-Hot delivery should be maintained for customer or we’ll lose our
customers.

Good texture
Well, texture is the lowest priority of customers. It’s same as the appearance of pizza. But it’s
affected by shape, size, method of baking, and ingredients. Good texture for every variety of
pizza should be maintained.

So, according to customers, we’ve determined these importance ratings (out of 6):

Good taste 6
Low price 5
Low fats and healthy 4
Appetizing appearance 3
Fresh and Hot delivery 2
Good texture 1

Identify how the product will satisfy the customer’s wants

In this step, we, the firm’s manager, have to reflect the customer’s desires and demand into our
company product. We’ve to consider those before we finally approve the making and cooking
of Hot-n-Spicy pizza. Our product i.e. pizza would be able to provide these stunning features to
customer:

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 Delicious and Fresh toppings (sausages, meat, bread slices etc.)
Appropriate weight, size, shape, and thickness
Low fatty eatables (less cheese and/or yeast)
Optional eatables for taste and texture
Pizza Color
Variety and Density of toppings

Delicious and Fresh toppings

“Toppings” is basically the layer of mixed ingredients. It actually served for the eatable
purposes. Since it is sandwiched between a bread slice and sausage, so it should be fresh as it is
key material for pizza. Delicious and fresh topping from us would surely help customers’
winning orders.

Appropriate weight, size, thickness, and shape

These features of pizza are directly related to pizza price. Heavier the pizza, more it’d cost.
Larger size and thicker it is, more it’d cost to customer. So, pizza should be in different sizes and
weights so that every customer would be able to purchase the one which best fit him. That is
why we’re going to introduce: Size, Medium and Large pizzas.

Low fatty eatables

Everyone wants a healthy pizza. So, we’re going to use those ingredients which have lowest
fats. Some ingredients are essential for taste of pizza but they have a high fat-value, so we’ll
definitely try to use them as lower as possible.

Optional eatables
Optional eatables are purely concerned with taste and variety in pizzas. For providing great and
delicious varieties in our Pizzas, we’ll use different optional eatables to amuse our customers.
This factor is also concerned with price and texture.

Pizza color
For appetizing appearance of a pizza, we would have to use some artificial flavored colors to
our pizza product. Additionally, these flavored colors also add spicy tastes to pizzas.

Density of toppings
Density of topping is directly concerned with the thickness and price of pizza. To provide
varieties in pizza we’ll use Low, Medium and High density toppings.

Now, we’ll develop the “hows”. This mean that how will our product satisfy customers. For this
purpose, we’ll again develop a table displaying how this will satisfy them.

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 relations:
Pizza color
Pizza color

App. Weight, shape, size, thickness Appropriate weight, size, shape and
thickness
Low fatty eatables

Identify relations between our hows

Low fatty eatables

Optional eatables
Optional eatables for taste and texture

Delicious and Fresh toppings

Delicious and Fresh toppings

Density of toppings Density of toppings

Matrix
Relationship

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some ‘hows’ are related to one-another. According to our diagram, we’ve got the following
In this step, we’ll develop a relationship matrix between our ‘hows’. For example in many cases,
Develop importance ratings
This step is quite difficult and longer. In this step, first we’ll draw the relationship matrix
between the “hows” and the “wants”. Then we determine the importance ratings for our final
work to be started.

This step is done here, quite simplified and explanatory:

Relationship
Matrix

Low relationship (1)

Medium relationship (3)

High relationship (6)

Customer

App. Weight, shape, size, thickness

Importance
ratings

Delicious and Fresh toppings

Customer

Density of toppings
“wants” Low fatty eatables

Optional eatables
Pizza color

Good taste 6

Low price 5

Good texture 1

Low fats and healthy 4

Fresh and hot delivery 2

Appetizing appearance 3

Our Importance Ratings 3 45 30 11 12 12

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These importance ratings are determined as follows:

Pizza color 3x1 3

App. Weight, size, etc. 6x6+3x3 45
Low fatty eatables 6x4+3x2 30
Optional eatables 5x1+3x2 11
Delicious and Fresh toppings 3x1+3x3 12
Density of toppings 1x6+3x2 12

Evaluate competing products

In this step, we’ll compare features of competing products of other companies. For example, in
market, we say two companies (Pizza House and Pizza Club) are competing our products, so,
we’ll first discuss and compare their pizzas to ours to get a more comprehensive and detailed
report about our pizza.

G = good

Company A
F = fair

Company B
P = poor

Good taste 6 G F

Low price 5 P P

Good texture 1 G G

Low fats and healthy 4 F F

Fresh and hot delivery 2 G G

Appetizing appearance 3 G F

Determine the technical attributes

The last step is determining of technical attributes and checking our performance with respect
to market products. Since this topic is out of scope of our course, so we won’t discuss it.

Now, we shall only consider our final and full House of Quality for Pizza. It’s given below:

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 FINAL HOQ OF PIZZA

Low relationship (1)

Medium relationship (3)

High relationship (6)

App. Weight, shape, size, thickness

G = good

Delicious and Fresh toppings

F = fair
P = poor

Density of toppings
Low fatty eatables

Optional eatables

Company A

Company B
Pizza color

Good taste 6 G F

Low price 5 P P

Good texture 1 G G

Low fats and healthy 4 F F

Fresh and hot delivery 2 G G

Appetizing appearance 3 G F

Our Importance Ratings 3 45 30 11 12 12

Technical Attributes

Technical Evaluation

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 AREAS OF APPLICATION OF QFD

QFD is applied in a wide variety of services, consumer products, military needs (such as the F-35
Joint Strike Fighter and emerging technology products. The technique is also used to identify
and document competitive marketing strategies and tactics (see example QFD House of Quality
for Enterprise Product Development, at right). QFD is considered a key practice of Design for Six
Sigma (DFSS - as seen in the referenced roadmap). It is also implicated in the new ISO
9000:2000 standard which focuses on customer satisfaction.

Results of QFD have been applied in Japan and elsewhere into deploying the high-impact
controllable factors in Strategic planning and Strategic management (also known as Hoshin
Kanri, Hoshin Planning, or Policy Deployment).

Acquiring market needs by listening to the Voice of Customer (VOC), sorting the needs, and
numerically prioritizing them (using techniques such as the Analytic Hierarchy Process) are the
early tasks in QFD. Traditionally, going to the Gemba (the "real place" where value is created for
the customer) is where these customer needs are evidenced and compiled.

While many books and articles on "how to do QFD" are available, there is a relative paucity of
example matrices available. QFD matrices become highly proprietary due to the high density of
product or service information found therein.

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 REFERENCES
The content above is taken from following websites:

Wikipedia (Wikipedia.org)
QFD Online (qfdonline.com)
QFD Capture (qfdcapture.com)
Google (google.com)
Encarta Encyclopedia (encarta.msn.com)
Britannica Online Encyclopedia (britannica.com)
QFD Institute (qfdi.org)
iSixSigma – House of Quality (isixsigma.com/tt/qfd)

Additionally the following book helped me:

Operations Management by Jay Heizer

Online PDF resources used:

Public State HOQ (public.iastate.edu/~vardeman/IE361/f01mini/johnson.pdf)

Stanford University (mml.stanford.edu/publications/1998/1998.WISC.QFD.Martin.pdf)
US Csuchi Corp. (www.csuchico.edu/~jtrailer/HOQ.pdf)
CIRI Orgn. (www.ciri.org.nz/downloads/Quality%20Function%20Deployment.pdf)

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