Exercise No.

QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT

Introduction

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a structured approach for integrating the “voice of the
customer” into the product or service development process. Also, it is a process for determining customer
requirements (customer “wants”) and translating them into the attributes (the “hows”) that each functional
area can understand and act upon.

QFD ensures accurate deployment of the “voice of the customer” throughout the company from
product planning to field service. QFD refers to both (1) determining what will satisfy the customer and (2)
translating those customer desires into the target specifications.

QFD is used early in the design process to help determine what will satisfy the customer and where
to deploy quality efforts. A graphic technique, called House of Quality (HOQ), is used in QFD that utilizes a
planning matrix to relate customer “wants” to “how” the firm is going to meet those “wants”. Following are
the six (6) basic steps in building the House of Quality:

1. Identify customer wants (what do prospective customers want in this product?). Indicate
customer importance ratings on these wants.
2. Evaluate competing products. (How well do competing products meet customer wants?)
3. Identify how the good/service will satisfy customer wants (Identify specific product
characteristics, features, or attributes and show how they will satisfy customer wants.)
4. Relate customer wants to product hows (Build a matrix that shows the relationship.)
5. Identify relationships between the firm’s hows (How do our hows tie together?)
6. Develop importance ratings (Using the customer’s importance ratings and weights for the
relationships, compute importance ratings.)

Illustration of the HOQ Tool and Its Steps

Step 1: Customer Requirements - Determine what market segments will be analyzed during the
process to identify who are the customers of the pre-approved product of choice. Then information on
customer requirements or “wants” must be gathered to hear the Voice of the Customer. For this purpose
and as a pre-preparation to this exercise, interviews, survey questionnaires, focus group discussions
can be conducted to document the necessary input data.
Customer Importance Ratings - On a scale from 1 - 5, with 5 being the highest, rate the importance
of each customer requirement or want according to the Voice of the Customer. Using the conventional
roll film-enabled camera for picture taking, see following example (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Customer Requirements, Company Case: Great Cameras, Inc.

Step 2: Competitive Assessment – Do a comparative rating of the selected product versus other
existing brands or similar products in the same customer segment on each of the attribute or customer
requirement using a Likert scale rating of 1-to-5, with 5 as the highest corresponding to poor-to-very
good ratings. Plotting with colored lines (1 color per company or brand) is an alternative approach for
this step. See an abbreviated illustration, using 1-to-3 rating scale (Figure 2), for the camera example.

Another term for this step is Planning Matrix/Customer Perceptions, the primary purpose of which is to
compare how well a design team met the customer requirements compared to its competitors. The
planning matrix shows the weighted importance of each requirement that the team and its competitors
are attempting to fulfill. Customer ratings, typically ranging from 1 to 5, are given to each company
under each requirement. These ratings per customer requirement (or want) are referred to when the
technical/design requirement(s) for design improvement is being conceived of and consequently such
ratings are considered in step 4 – creating the interrelationship matrix.
 Figure 2: Competitive Assessment, Company Case: Great Cameras, Inc.

Step 3: Technical / Design Requirements - Identify what must be achieved to satisfy what the
customer wants. In addition, regulatory standards and requirements dictated by management must be
identified. Once all requirements are identified, it is important to answer what must be done to the
product design to fulfill the necessary requirements. These are the “how to’s,” a reference illustration is
shown in Figure 3 below using the camera example.

Figure 3: Technical Requirements, Company Case: Great Cameras, Inc.

Step 4: Interrelationship Matrix - Determine the relationship between customer wants and the
technical requirements. Ask the question, "What is the strength of the relationship between the technical
requirements and the customers’ needs?" Relationships can either be weak, moderate, or strong.
These relationships are portrayed by symbols indicating a strong relationship, a medium relationship,
or a weak relationship. The symbols in turn are assigned respective indexes such as 9-3-1, 4-2-1, or
5-3-1. When no relationship is evident between a pair a zero value is always assigned, or a blank will
suffice. The interrelationship matrix should follow the Pareto Principle keeping in mind that designing
to the critical 20% will satisfy 80% of the customer desires. Therefore, there should not be a significant
number of strong relationships between pairs. See Figure 4 below as an illustration, using the camera
example.

Figure 4: Interrelationship Matrix, Company Case: Great Cameras, Inc.

Step 5: Trade-off Matrix (Technical Correlation Matrix) - Examine how each of the technical
requirements impact each other. The technical correlation matrix, which is more often referred to as the
Roof (see Figure 5), is used to aid in developing relationships between customer requirements and
product requirements and identifies where these units must work together otherwise they will be in a
design conflict. The following symbols are used to represent what type of impact each requirement has
on the other:
★ – Strong positive
◎ – Positive
x – Negative
xx – Strong negative
These symbols are then entered into the cells where a correlation has been identified. The objective is
to highlight any requirements that might be in conflict with each other. If there is a negative or strongly
negative impact between requirements, the design must be compromised unless the negative impact
can be designed out. Some conflicts can’t be resolved because they are an issue of physics. Others
can be design-related, which leaves it up for decision on how to resolve them. Negative impacts can
also represent constraints, which may be bi-directional. As a result, improving one of them may actually
cause a negative impact to the other. Sometimes an identified change impairs so many others that it is
just simply better to leave it alone. Asking the following question when working with this part of the
House of Quality helps to clarify the relationships among requirements: “If technical requirement X is
improved, will it help or hinder technical requirement Z?”

Many technical requirements are related to each other so working to improve one may help a related
requirement and a positive or beneficial effect can result. On the other hand, working to improve one
requirement may negatively affect a related requirement as mentioned above. One of the principal
benefits of the Roof is that it flags these negative relationships so they can be resolved. If these issues
aren’t settled satisfactorily, some aspects of the final product will dissatisfy the customer.

Figure 5: Tradeoff Matrix, Company Case: Great Cameras, Inc.

Step 6a: Importance Ratings – Calculate the absolute importance ratings for each technical / design
requirement and customer requirement combination. This numerical calculation is the product of the
cell value and the customer importance rating. Numbers are then added up in their respective columns
to determine the weighted importance rating for each technical / design requirement. This provides the
prioritization (importance ranking) on which technical aspect(s), called technical properties of the
chosen product matters the most to its customer. See Figure 6 as an illustration. It indicates that
working on the high priority technical requirements usually will deliver great value to the customer.

Figure 6: Importance Ratings, Company Case: Great Cameras, Inc.

Step 6b: Design Targets & Benchmarks - An organization’s current product(s) can be benchmarked
technically with competitors' products on the high priority technical requirements or characteristics. In
many cases, organizations should not be surprised to learn that competitors are better at a given task
or characteristic. QFD assists organizations in technical assessments, i.e., in identifying technical
areas and in developing areas where the most cost effective customer satisfaction can be achieved.

Step 6c: Technical Properties & Targets - Organizations can then examine the Customer Context
for usage concerns that must be accounted for, and set design target specifications for the prioritized
technical requirements or characteristics. At a minimum, current performance standards should be
maintained.

As seen in the completed HOQ diagram for the case example on Great Cameras, Inc. (Figure 7), the
technical properties matrix uses specific items to record the computed priorities assigned to technical /
design requirements. The technical properties matrix uses specific items to record the priorities
assigned to technical requirements. It also provides a technical performance achieved by competitive
products and the degree of difficulty in developing each requirement. The final output of the matrix is a
set of target values for each technical requirement to be met by the new design. In some cases,
 organizations are not able to create the most optimum design because of constraints related to cost,
technology, or other related items.

Figure 7: Completed HOQ Matrix, Company Case: Great Cameras, Inc.

Objectives of the Exercise

The activity engages students in a “learn-by-doing” exercise in the construction of a House of

Quality (HOQ) for a pre-approved product of choice. The exercise aims to enable the students:

1. To describe in detail the inputs and outputs of each step in building the HOQ for a chosen
product.
2. To discuss the results of the sequential steps and the analyses done in the process.
3. To develop a set of prioritized target specifications for the new or improved design.
4. To gain insights on the use of the QFD techniques and HOQ tool in a product design &
development (PDD) context.
Instructions

1. Submit for approval an existing product as proposed target for study using the HOQ tool. This
ensures no duplication of activity for the QFD/HOQ exercise.
2. Prepare a written report with the prescribed cover page and discussion outline using the following
format: Arial font, size 11, 1.5 line spacing and 1” all-around margins.
3. Include all product sketches or pictures as appropriate in sections of the report in order to highlight
the specific design aspects that are the target(s) of discussion.
4. Draw the House of Quality step-by-step to show and explain the process of applying the tool on the
product under study and the inputs, computations and outputs, if any. Legends pertaining to the
use of symbols must be indicated to explain the meaning of such. Interpret the results accordingly.
5. Show the completed HOQ matrix with the “prioritized target values or specifications” for the
development of a new or improved product design.
6. Draw management insights from the use of the QFD technique and HOQ tool in a PDD context.
 MAPUA Institute of Technology

School of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management

IE103P - A1

PRODUCT DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT

Exercise No. 1

Quality Function Deployment / House of Quality

Name: __________________________________ Student No: ________________

Course & Section: ________________________ Program & Year _____________

Date Performed: __________________________

Date Submitted: __________________________

Professor: _______________________________

GRADE
 Exercise No. 1
QFD / HOQ – “Name of Product”

I. Background
[Introduce the approved product under study and provide a concise description of its salient
features, characteristics and functionalities. Rationalize the choice of the product on which
the QFD/HOQ methodology will be applied. Pictures & sketches will help in the discussion of
this section. Use proper citation (APA v.6) when quoting and/or paraphrasing articles/journals
to support the discussion points.]

II. Objectives
[Write down the objective of the exercise for the product under discussion. Include the
identification of the needs and wants from a customer perspective and substantiate them with
information gathered from sources that should be cited, e.g., survey results, interviews,
secondary data and the like.]

III. Methodology
[Discuss the actual step-by-step procedure in applying the HOQ tool on the product under
study with the corresponding explanation of input data, computations, if any.]

IV. Results & Discussion

[Articulate the findings from the exercise and highlight the important results that should meet
the objectives above. Be consistent in the discussion and avoid repeating items taken up in
the preceding section. This section is more product-specific in discussion.]

V. Conclusion
[The concluding remarks must infer from the results and discussion above with mention of the
key takeaway(s) from the exercise and the importance/relevance to the subject matter and
the course as a whole. This section is more tool-specific and process-oriented as regards
product design & development. ]

VI. Recommendation
[This section must provide insights from doing the exercise and recommend for further study
the areas not covered in the scope of the discussion, which when looked into can improve the
undertaking of the exercise with respect to the product or topic under discussion.]