Quality Function Deployment Overview

Principles

Definition

Quality function deployment is a structured planning and design methodology employed to translate customer requirements, often referred to as the 'voice of the customer', into technical specifications and engineering characteristics throughout the product or service development process. It systematically utilizes matrix-based tools, prominently the 'House of Quality', to map relationships between customer demands, technical attributes, competitive assessments, and engineering priorities, aiming to ensure that design and production decisions are directly driven by perceived customer value, thereby enhancing quality, reducing development time, and improving customer satisfaction.

Ontological type

Core Methodology

House of Quality Design

Benefits and Limitations

Key developments

Key Figures

VOC-driven QFD era

Abbie Griffin [1] is a leading figure in the VOC-driven QFD era (1991–1997), with affiliations at the University of Chicago [3] and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [4] during this period. Her key contributions include translating the Voice of the Customer into quantified design attributes and fostering cross-functional linkage among marketing, engineering, and manufacturing, as discussed in The Voice of the Customer [7], Patterns of Communication Among Marketing, Engineering and Manufacturing—A Comparison Between Two New Product Teams [8], and Evaluating QFD's use in US firms as a process for developing products [9], which helped institutionalize QFD practices in this era. Sara L. Rynes [2] is associated with Cornell University [5] and the University of Minnesota [6] during this era. Her contribution in this era is Making total quality work: Aligning organizational processes, performance measures, and stakeholders [10], which highlighted how organizational alignment and measurement are essential for operationalizing VOC-derived quality targets.

Institutional Integration era

Kurt Matzler [1] emerges as a key figure in the Institutional Integration era, with affiliations at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Austrian Universities [3] and Universität Innsbruck [4]. Kurt Matzler [1]'s 1998 paper How to make product development projects more successful by integrating Kano's model of customer satisfaction into quality function deployment [7] represents a core contribution, applying Kano's model within QFD to better capture customer needs and guide early-stage product decisions, which was crucial for aligning quality tools with market-driven development in that era. Jens J. Dahlgaard [2] is a leading figure in this era, connected with Linköping University [5] and Aarhus University [6]. Jens J. Dahlgaard [2]'s 2006 paper Lean production, six sigma quality, TQM and company culture [8] synthesizes lean, Six Sigma, and TQM perspectives to strengthen organizational quality systems, illustrating how integrated approaches to QFD supported governance and enterprise-wide quality improvement in this period.

Digital Quality 4.0 era

Željko Stević [1] is a scholar associated with University of Sarajevo [3] and Necmettin Erbakan University [4] during the Digital Quality 4.0 era. His contributions include the A New Model for Determining Weight Coefficients of Criteria in MCDM Models: Full Consistency Method (FUCOM) [7], The Selection of Wagons for the Internal Transport of a Logistics Company: A Novel Approach Based on Rough BWM and Rough SAW Methods [8], and A ROUGH MULTICRITERIA APPROACH FOR EVALUATION OF THE SUPPLIER CRITERIA IN AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY [9], which advanced weight-derivation and rough MCDM techniques for quality deployment in data-driven contexts. Dragan Pamučar [2] is a scholar linked to Imperial College London [5] and Nantong University [6] in this era. His contributions center on the FUCOM [7] and the Wagons [8] papers, illustrating how high-impact MCDM methods and rough weighting approaches shaped Digital Quality 4.0 practices in supplier evaluation and customer requirement prioritization.