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, Critical to Quality Tree (CTQ)
y Ted Hessing
Critical to Quality Tree (CTQ Tree) is a methodology to translate customer needs into specific, measurable, and actionable
performance requirements. In other words, Critical to Quality Tree (CTQ Tree) translates customer needs into quantified
requirements for the product or services.
ACritical to Quality Tree (CTQ Tree) reflects what the consumers of your process cite as essential to success. Itis advisable
todetermine the critical to quality parameters with respect to customers before initiating any process improvements. Use a
CTQ tree to investigate your customer base by moving from general needs to more specific ones.
CTQ Tree helps clarify what is considered a defect in the process. It also helps to distinguish what your client's needs vs.
what their requirements are.
Identify Voice of The Customer - Critical to
Customer
The frst of CTQ tree is to understand the voice of the customer. It is learning what is important to the customer. Surveys,
interviews, Gemba Walks, and focus group analysis are a few tools and techniques to understand these requirements.
‘The next step is to take those requirements and translate them into measurable attributes, which is called Critical to Client
(CTC). Critical to Quality implies that customers have a certain quality threshold. Once a product meets that threshold, theproduct satisfies the customer's requirements. For example, eCommerce sites such as Amazon knows that customers
generally require 2-day delivery or better on their products. That 2-day delivery window is the Critical to Customer figure.
(CTC metrics may include both qualitative and quantitative data as seen below.
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etait) a Pie GG
Customer Complaint “expected my package Serviceability Shipments must
days ago. PLEASE HELP” deliver within the
day(s) specified
Internet Survey “85% of response prefer Serviceability Order fulfillment
orders to arrive within 2 must occur within
days of order” 2-days of order
placement
Focus Groups “Customers older than User eCommerce page
55 struggle to navigate Interface needs to be
our eCommerce page” (accessibility) ria
senior citizens
‘One way of translating Voice of Client (VOC) to Critical to Client (CTC) i to view the needs identified and relate them to
the Kano model,
Now that we've translated Voice of Client into specific Critical to Client measures it is time to figure out what our company
needs to do in order to achieve those levels of service. We do that by combining the analysis into the CTQ Tree.
Elements of CTQ Tree
CTQ tree helps teams to visualize the customer's needs, drivers, and performance requirements. The tree starts with the
Identification of customer needs and then branches into drivers and further requirements.+ Need: The first step of CTQ Tree is to identify the customer's needs. This is the actual product or service that you
deliver to the customer.
+ Drivers: Once you determine the customer needs, identify the quality drivers that must be present to fulfill customer
needs.
‘+ Requirements: Finally list requirements for each driver. In other words, record measurable performance
requirements for each driver.
Customer Need Quality Driver Performance Requirement
Requirement1
Requirement2
When to use CTQ Tree
‘Six Sigma teams usually start with VoC data when defining a problem and identifying the goals for a project in the Define
pphase of DMAIC methodology. Once you have the VoC, create a CTQ tree to identify customer needs. It’s useful to build a
cTQtree to:Understand the customer needs more clearly
Identify current issues and improve the product or service
During the early stages of designing or developing a product or service
Stand out from competitors
CTQ Tree Steps
Identify the customers: Customer identification is a crucial step of the Voice Of Customer (VOC) process. A customer
is a person or company who purchases products or services.
Solicit Voice of Customer: Soliciting the voice of the clients important for any organization. The best way to get
higher customer satisfaction is to ensure you are delivering what they want when they engage you.
Understand customer needs: From the voice of the customer, understand the customer needs. You can also prioritize
the customer inputs using Pareto analysis.
‘Translate that data into Critical to Client measures, Then, set ranges and tolerances for the CTCs.
Identify the quality drivers and determine how well your organization's process needs to do internally in order to meet
those measures,
Set parameters for your internal processes that deliver to those drivers- those are your Critical to Quality measures
c1Qs.
Finally, validate the requirements with the customers
CTQ Tree Example
Examp|
grocery store collected feedback from customers to identify opportunities to improve the business. From the
data, they have realized that most customers are looking for an onlline option to place an order without being at the store to
buy the groceries. Use the CTQ Tree method to translate customer needs into specific, measurable, and actionable
performance requirements,Customer Need Quality Driver
Mobile App- Free download
J Easy sign up using mobile one time password
Listthe grocery categories (vegetables, fruits,
frorentoods, met, beverages etc)
Acceptall kinds of payment methods (credit
‘cards, mobile wallet, net banking)
‘Online chatservice
4X7 Support
Quick returns processing
Benefits of CTQ Tree
+ CTQTree helps in identifying the performance requirements to delight customers
‘+ Focuses on the key metrics of customer satisfaction
Translates customer requirements into CTQs
‘+ Helps in quality improvement of product or service
‘+ Ithelps designers to understand the quality drivers to design the product or service
‘+ Easy to visualize the customer needs, quality drivers, and requirements in a graphical way
Important Videos’ of CTQ Tree
Corporate CTQ DrilldownASQ Green Belt Critical to Quality Tree Questions
Question: Which of the following tools is used to translate broad requirements into specific requirements?
(A) Aquality control plan
(8) The theory of constraints (TOC)
(C)Acitical to quality (CTQ) tree
{D) A process flowchart
Answer:
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Ted Hessing
l originally created SixSigmaStudyGuide.com to help me prepare for my own Black belt exams. Overtime I've grown
the site to help tens of thousands of Six Sigma belt candidates prepare for their Green Belt & Black Belt exams. Go
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Comments (2)
Liam Walsh
March 15,2018 at 2:12 pm
‘what problem solving techniques are used in the project charter?
Reply
Six Sigma Study Guide z
March 16, 2018 at 6:02 am1m. See project charter here
Reply
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