Application of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to improve productdesign quality in school furniture

Abstract

Today Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a powerful development method whit a wide range of applications to translate customers’ needs into technical requirements for achieving customer satisfaction. The current study demonstrated a QFD analysis to improve school furniture design in Tehran as the baseline of Iran. Accordingly, we extended the widely used QFD method into a complex set of customer demands about the school furniture and showed the step-by-step application of QFD that focused on the firs matrix known as House of Quality matrix. The study started by identifying the problem statement, specifying the objectives and designing the scopes of school furniture. 160 students recruited from three high schools located in different areas of Tehran participated in our study. Student’s requirements were collected and translated into the technical requirements using QFD method. Data gathering was carried out through survey, questionnaire distribution and structured interview. Subsequently, the collected data was analysed to find the best solutions for the problems. Obtained results from House of Quality matrix evaluation, were used to provide suggestions and solutions to reduce the problems. The present case study shows that QFD method can help demonstrators to ascertain inter relationship between operation requirements and measures of performance.