Quality Function Deployment in Business Case Studies

Abstract

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has been used earlier in the design of curriculum of courses and various other aspects of imparting higher education. In this paper, we have shown the use of this concept in designing and discussing business case studies in imparting management education. It is becoming increasingly difficult to get readymade case studies, which can satisfy the learning requirements of heterogeneous group of students in any MBA program. It is thus imperative that the instructors will have to make case studies on their own suitable to their own set of students with unique expectations for discussion in the classroom. The QFD process starts by asking the students about their overall expectations and the relative importance of each of the expectations on a scale. Various relationships between these expectations and the corresponding technical requirements to satisfy these expectations are then found. The interrelationships between these technical requirements are also determined. The entire information is shown in different parts of a matrix known as the QFD house of quality. The output of this matrix is a set of values suggesting which technical requirements are more important to be addressed in order to satisfy the requirements of students in a better way. In the first part of this paper, we discussed a case from a textbook authored by one of the authors of this paper, in a class of MBA students. Then, we interviewed a sample group of students to know the performance ratings of this case and the cases of our closest competitor (instructor) with respect to their various expectations. In the second part, we applied the QFD to find the technical requirements, which will help in satisfying the student’s expectations in a better way. In the last part of the paper, on the basis of these inputs, we designed a new case study and discussed the case with the same class of MBA students. Feedback from students was obtained to find the performance ratings of the new case subjected to quality function deployment. The performance rating of the new case was found to be higher on various parameters giving positive results of the QFD exercise.