Areas of Application
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 included 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, 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.
Read more about this topic: Quality Function Deployment
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