Skip to content

Student Learning Objective 7

Appraise customer satisfaction using quantitative and qualitative methods.

Learning Objective C

Collect Voice of Customer Information.


Slide 1: Overview

  • QFD developed by Dr. Mizuno. First applied at Kobe shipyards in 1972. Credited with 61% reduction in startup costs

  • First used in the US at Xerox in 1984

  • Planning tool to fulfill customer satisfaction

  • Focuses on "Voice of Customer"

  • Seeks to bridge gap between customer needs and engineering/production


Slide 2: Overview, continued

  • QFD can be used:

  • Product planning

  • Part development

  • Process planning

  • Production planning

  • Service industries


Slide 3: QFD Teams

  • Implementation of QFD requires a large investment of time

  • Scope of project must be clearly defined

  • Time and inter-team communications are very important

  • Team meetings are also very important

  • Two types of teams:

  • New product

  • Improving an existing product

  • Teams are composed of members from marketing, design, quality, finance and production


Slide 4: Benefits of QFD

  • Improves customer satisfaction

  • Reduces implementation time

  • Promotes teamwork

  • Provides documentation

  • See Figure 12--1 from Besterfield

Besterfield Figure 12-1: Benefits of QFD


Slide 5: Voice of Customer

  • Key principles:

  • Customer dictates the attributes of a product

  • Customer satisfaction, like quality, is defined as meeting or exceeding customer expectations

  • Words used by customer to describe their expectations are often referred to as the voice of the customer

  • The following questions are useful for gathering data:

  • What does the customer really want?

  • What are the customer's expectations?

  • Are the customer's expectations used to drive the design process?

  • What can the design team do to achieve customer satisfactions?

  • Discuss customer information and ways that an organization collects data on next slide


Slide 6: Collecting Customer Information

Besterfield Figure 12-2: Types of Customer Information and How to Collect it


Slide 7: House of Quality

  • Graphical planning tool

  • Elements include

  • Customer requirements

  • Technical description

  • Relationship between customer requirements and technical description

  • Interrelationship between customer requirements

  • Competitive analysis

  • See figure 12--3 from Besterfield (next slide)


Slide 8: House of Quality

Besterfield Figure 12-3: House of Quality


Slide 9: Building a House of Quality

  1. List customer requirements (WHATs). Often refined from primary to secondary to tertiary requirements (see Figure 12-5)

  2. List technical descriptors (HOWs). Once again refined from primary to secondary to tertiary requirements

  3. Develop a Relationship matrix between the WHATs and HOWs

  4. Develop an interrelationship matrix between HOWs

  5. Competitive assessment

  6. Develop prioritized customer requirements

  7. Develop prioritized technical descriptors