Engineering Design Education by Problem Based Learning Using Quality Function Deployment

Abstract

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a comprehensive design method to translate the voice of the customer into engineering characteristics of a new product. The author designed a problem based learning seminar for identifying the customers’ requirements, classifying the importance of those requirements, and finding the engineering characteristics which will be highly relevant to these requirements using QFD. In a seven times seminar, students conceived of the complaints and desires for the product, a handy cleaner, formed the voice of the customer, and defined the customers’ requirements. Then they extracted engineering characteristics from the requirements, composed a quality matrix, calculated the strength of influence between the requirements and the engineering characteristics, and determined the important characteristics for improving the customers’ satisfaction. The results of a post seminar questionnaire showed that ninety-six per cent of students felt improvements of their design ability.