Concept Of Quality Function Deployment Research Articles

A QFD Approach to Addressing the Impacts of Tourism Development

ABSTRACT The present study attempts to assess how far tourism development in a host region results in both positive as well as negative impacts. A series of paired t-tests are carried out between the expectation of the host community on tourism impacts and their experience with the same, which reveal that the host community expectation is remaining unfulfilled on all eight positive impacts. Results of t-tests pertaining to eight negative impacts further indicate that the experience of the host community with two negative impacts is significantly poor compared to their expectations. Subsequently with a view to addressing these unfulfilled positive impacts and significant negative impacts, a number of strategies are formulated by eliciting opinions from tourism professionals employing the concept of Quality Function Deployment (QFD). Pair-wise relationships among the strategies are investigated to find out whether the strategies support each other or are in conflict with each other. Finally the strategies are prioritized and evaluated, which provides valuable insights to the tourism planners for effectively addressing tourism impacts in the host region.

Development of an AHP-QFD framework for designing a tourism product

A tourism product, characterised by its non-amenability to uniform product specifications, is considered to be an amalgam of different tangible and intangible elements. Keeping in view the heterogeneity, perishability and the uniqueness involved in a tourism product, the present study attempts to develop an AHP-QFD framework for designing a tourism product, which takes care of the touristic needs of tourists. The framework has been demonstrated with the help of an illustrative case study. Having identified the needs of tourists with reference to a tourist destination, the needs are prioritised with the help of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Subsequently, the concept of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is employed to formulate operating strategies by eliciting opinions from tourism professionals. Pairwise relationships among the operating strategies are investigated to find out whether the strategies support each other or are in conflict with each other. Finally the strategies are prioritised and evaluated, which enables the design of a tourism product incorporating the diverse needs of tourists.

Integrating ISO 9001:2000 and Six Sigma into organisational culture

This research is a descriptive one, in which elements of school culture have been determined from statistical results of a school culture questionnaire of two ISO-certified secondary schools in Hong Kong. The cultural elements ? 'realising responsibility and feeling respect' ? actually correspond to the ISO 9001:2000 requirements. Besides this, the author has combined comments from interviewees of ISO-related stakeholders into the target areas for improvement based on the concept of Quality Function Deployment (QFD), internally to improve organisational culture and mindset; externally to hear the voice of internal customers and to enhance competitiveness; and consequently, to increase student satisfaction and to provide better educational service. This is a kind of social responsibility of educational institutes. It is recommended to have more ISO-certified educational institutes of different levels and from different countries participating in future researches on applications of ISO, Six Sigma and TQM to organisational culture, curriculum design, and student or teacher assessment.

A Strategy for Managing Customer-oriented Product Design

Customer requirements play an important role in securing the competitive advantages of a company’s new product development endeavors. Based on the concept of quality function deployment (QFD), this article presents a novel procedure to effectively link customer requirements with design characteristics for product design. The proposed procedure comprises an analytic hierarchy process (AHP), which is adapted to evaluate the importance of customer requirements, and an interpretive structural modeling (ISM) technique, which is used to tackle the interdependency of customer requirements so as to clarify their structural relationships. The procedure is validated using a case study on the design of functional clothes. The details of the validation are presented and discussed.

Assessing Learning and Teaching Performance of a Construction Capstone Course

The assessment and evaluation of a course refers to the selection and implementation of methods used to determine whether and how well the course's objectives have been achieved, and to the interpretation of results. Researchers and educators have extensively discussed various methods to assess the learning performance of students. This paper develops an assessment tool that can be used to measure the level of achievement of the learning objectives for a construction capstone course. The development of the assessment tool employs the concept of quality function deployment (QFD), a technique used to measure the service quality of an organization.

A quality function deployment methodology with signal and noise ratio for improvement of Wasserman’s weights

Quality function deployment (QFD) has attracted much attention in not only the quality management field but also other engineering fields. The original concept of QFD is focused only on the voice of customers, which means that the needs of customers should be satisfied from the design stage of products. However, some problems were found in using subjective and qualitative data when constructing a house of quality (HOQ). To solve the problems, Wasserman presented a methodology to consider correlation weights on the top matrix of HOQ, but the weights are subjective data and can not guarantee consistency and objectivity. The Wasserman’s weights are randomly determined under subjective conditions. This research applies Taguchi’s robust design method as another method for obtaining the HOQ top matrix weights. With the new weights, S/N-QFD is deployed, and the result of S/N-QFD is compared with W-QFD. As an application example, with a real process and quality data of a representative company product, the relationship and the correlation between the process characteristics and the quality characteristics are analyzed. Finally, this paper presents a new QFD processing methodology to determine the weights with more consistent and objective data.

Desdobramento da qualidade no desenvolvimento de filmes flexíveis para embalagens

Um dos métodos atuais importantes para o desenvolvimento de produtos é o QFD (Quality Function Deployment ou Desdobramento da Função Qualidade). O QFD consiste em um processo sistemático para traduzir a opinião do cliente em requisitos técnicos e operacionais, mostrando e documentando as informações na forma de matrizes. O método objetiva enfocar os itens mais importantes, proporcionando um mecanismo para alcançar vantagens competitivas no processo de desenvolvimento. Este trabalho destaca o conceito do QFD, citando uma aplicação em uma empresa que produz filmes flexíveis de polipropileno (BOPP). O trabalho apresenta alguns aspectos da introdução do método na empresa, apontando as dificuldades encontradas, resultados e benefícios decorrentes da implantação. Dentre os benefícios gerados, destacam-se a importância do papel do QFD como um método para sistematizar o processo de desenvolvimento, bem como outros benefícios para a equipe, tais como melhoria nas habilidades de planejamento, disseminação do conhecimento e melhoria de comunicação entre as áreas funcionais.

Using the QFD concept to resolve customer satisfaction strategy decisions

To achieve higher operating performance, many enterprises have implemented customer satisfaction (CS) activities. However, after collecting massive amounts of data, most enterprises still cannot make effective CS decisions. There are two factors involved in the difficulty in CS decisions. When collecting data, enterprises have trouble covering the wide scope of customer demands. Furthermore, it is difficult to prioritize the collected elements. The purpose of this article is therefore to modify the traditional quality function deployment (QFD) methodology and propose using “strategy value” as an effective decision basis for CS activities. The use of “strategy value” can strongly supplement the lack of “importance” and “performance” in the traditional analysis. A case study involving an enterprise's strategy decisions is used to analyze the proposed concepts and methodology. The results from this study will facilitate enterprises achieving more effective CS strategy decisions and generally increase the probability for CS success rates among enterprises.

A concurrent function deployment technique for a workgroup-based engineering design process

In this paper, an alternate framework to quality function deployment (QFD) called concurrent function deployment (CFD), suitable for a workgroup-based engineering design process, is described. The methodology exploits the independence of units that manifest itself in a company strategic business unit, total quality management, and enterprise knowledge management concepts. It considers parallel deployments of a number of 'values' in addition to 'quality', as opposedtoaserialfour-phaseddeploymentofquality. Consider,forexample,the popular American Supplier Institute's (ASI's) four-phased QFD concept (Sullivan 1988). ASI's QFD is based on using a single measurement, 'quality', and the four phases called 'quality plans' are deployed serially. CFD employs a concurrent deployment process of its 'value sets'-'quality' happens to be one of its important values. Six concurrent value-sets, namely functionality (quality), performance (X-ability), tools and technology (innovation), cost, responsiveness, and infrastructure (delivery) are considered in CFD, running in parallel rather than serially. In the present setting, Don Clausing's QFD process emerges as a special case of this CFD (Prasad 1998). CFD is more suited early on during a product design and development process-to deal with trade-offs among the crucial factors of artifact values. A set of three-dimensional value characteristics matrices is employed in CFD to ensure that such trade-off goals are adequately addressed.

High Touch—Systematic Identification of Customer Needs: Case study of an Home Electric Washer

In the emerging paradigm of new product development, integrating ergonomic design principle as related to the potential needs and implicit demand of the customer is strongly emphasized. However, traditional development processes are widely used in the design of home appliances such as electrical washing machine. The first author provided the concept of ‘High Touch’ design as a systematic methodology to identify customer needs in a consumer product. In the High Touch design process, matrices of human needs and product function are formulated and evaluated using the concept of quality function deployment. Based on the evaluation result, an electronics company in Korea developed a new model of electric washer with strong market response. This paper describes the methods and analyses used in the conceptual design of the washer.

The implementation of simultaneous engineering in the stage of product concept development: A process orientated improvement of quality function deployment

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has been introduced as a method of implementing Simultaneous Engineering. In spite of its achievements so far, QFD does not sufficiently link engineering to marketing and marketing science. The QFD procedure takes neither the development of market orientated or constructional product concepts, nor the coordination of both into account, although they play an important role in product definition. In order to overcome this and other deficiencies of the traditional QFD method, the author develops the process model of ‘Integrated Concept Development’ (ICoDe). It is proposed to fill the gap between marketing science and engineering by consequently relating market orientated concept development and testing to the House of Quality concept of QFD. The ICoDe process is described by refering to a ‘simulated’ application example of a wind turbines concept development.

An integrative approach for selecting a TQM/BPR implementation plan

States that there is general agreement among total quality management (TQM) and business process re‐engineering (BPR) experts that properly implemented organizational change programmes improve customer satisfaction and organizational performance. Suggests that there is, however, a growing frustration with the less than positive results that many companies have experienced with TQM or BPR. These failures have resulted in much debate about the usefulness of such programmes. Many executives believe that they have to choose between TQM and BPR and consider these programmes to be mutually exclusive. Yet, advocates of TQM and re‐engineering have recognized and acknowledged that the best organizational change programmes are those which integrate quality and re‐engineering initiatives. Examines some reasons behind TQM and BPR failures, and presents a model for integrating TQM and BPR implementation plans, while focusing on the linkage of the organization’s strategic goals and culture with this process. The framework uses the concept of quality function deployment and house of quality for the selection of a TQM/BPR implementation plan. Presents an example which illustrates the procedure.

Quality function deployment: application to rehabilitation services.

Describes how the challenge of providing rehabilitative services at reasonable costs is beginning to mount. The management of quality in rehabilitative services is therefore gaining increasing attention in the health care arena. States that if a link is implied between the above stated goal and customer satisfaction, it is imperative to evaluate quality or customer satisfaction in the context of the patient's experience. Describes the quality function deployment (QFD) system and how it leads to a better understanding of the customer's needs and wants. Explores the process of applying the concept of QFD to physical therapy.

Using quality function deployment in manufacturing strategic planning

Describes efforts to extend the use of quality function deployment (QFD) to manufacturing strategy development. QFD uses a house of quality to translate the “voice of the customer” into engineering specifications. Originally developed and applied as a powerful tool for concurrent product and process design, QFD is widely used in industry as a technique within total quality management (TQM). The approach has only recently been applied in strategic planning. Describes how the traditional QFD concepts and methods can be used in the formulation of manufacturing strategy to ensure alignment with business strategy. Presents a case study at a powdered metals manufacturer to show how the QFD methodology can be adapted for use in manufacturing strategy formulation.

Strategic marketing planning: a quality function deployment approach

Explores the application of quality function deployment (QFD) concept in strategic marketing planning. First discusses the literature of quality control concepts and marketing concepts, and the current thinking in strategic marketing planning. Then proposes that the QFD concept can be an ideal approach in the strategic marketing planning. The QFD approach maximizes benefits for both customers and companies in the long run, by first determining the customer’s needs, and then translating these needs into corporate goals and marketing objectives. Based on these goals and objectives, marketing strategies and marketing tactics could be developed and implemented to ensure the customers’ needs are met and company’s objectives are obtained.

LISTENING TO THE CUSTOMER: IMPLEMENTING QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT

The author explains the concept of quality function deployment, developed by Yoji Akao in 1978, and how it can be used to center institutional improvement efforts on customer needs. In addition, th...