Quality Function Deployment for Environment (QFDE) to Support Design for Environment (DFE)

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology for applying Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to environmentally conscious design in the early stages of product development. The benefit of this approach is the simultaneous consideration of conventional design factors and environmental aspects during conceptual design. QFD’s main mission is to translate customer requirements to product characteristics and design attributes. QFD clarifies what is important for a product to be competitive in the market and identifies engineering specifications and designs that respond to the “voice of customer (VOC).” QFD for the Environment (QFDE) we propose could be applied to environmentally conscious design by including environmental aspects as quality requirements in addition to conventional VOCs. After discussing what kind of requirements and attributes of a product should be considered from the environmental point of view, we came up with a set of environmental quality requirements and engineering specifications, and their correlation factors. Design engineers can find out which parts are the most important parts to enhance environmental consciousness of their products by executing QFDE phase I through phase II. Further, we developed a methodology to evaluate the effects of design improvement concerning the parts on environmental quality requirements as phase III and IV.