Quality function deployment: A teamwork approach

Abstract

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is still very new to many companies. However, as companies understand the importance of being ‘customer-focused’, QFD is being rapidly adopted as a means of planning products or services to meet the customer’s requirements. In fact over more than two decades, QFD has evolved greatly. People who used it have made many major improvements and alternations for different business contexts. QFD is a method used to identify critical customer attributes and to create a specific link between customer attributes and design parameters. QFD requires team effort to be successful. The team concept in QFD is not without challenges. Many companies are only beginning to develop the experience to operate teams effectively. However, QFD is not a panacea and it will take a lot of time and effort if one wants to get the best possible results. The purpose of this paper is to review Quality Function Deployment in terms of a teamwork approach. In this paper, I discuss the definition and importance of QFD, QFD Process, the benefits of QFD and QFD as a teamwork approach.