QFD

Question 1

What three things does QFD help identify?

Answer 1

1. Where companies have a competitive advantage
2. Where it can gain a competitive advantage
3. Where it lags and must improve

Question 2

What are the key issues with QFD? (9)

Answer 2

• It should be management led and needs a implementation strategy
• training required
• multi-disciplinary team based application are best
• approach can be subjective and tedious
• usually not extended past phase 1
• involvement of customer and suppliers is key
• the approach can is often applied too late

Question 3

What are the 4 phases of QFD?

Answer 3

Phase 1 - Product planning

• customer requirement from market research
• ranked against design requirements
• important requirements are carried forward

Phase 2 - Design deployment

• critical design requirements ranked with design characteristics
• yields important interface issues between design & manufacture
• critical design characteristics are carried forward

Phase 3 - Process Planning

• important design charact ranked with key process operations
• actions to improve understanding of key processes + experience
• critical process operations highlighted and carried forward

Phase 4 - Production Planning

• critical process operation ranked against production requirements
• translating important customer requirements to production planning

Question 4

Benefits of QFD (8)

Answer 4

• Increased customer satisfaction
• improved quality
• reduced design changes + associated costs
• reduced lead times
• improved paper trail
• promotes teamwork
• provides a structured approach to PD
• Improves customer/supplied relatinships

Question 5

What is QFD?

Answer 5

QFD is used to understand and quantify the importance of customer needs and requirements, and to support the definition of product and process requirements. Records, user, design, process operation and production requirements.

Question 6

What are the 3 objectives of QFD?

Answer 6

1) Prioritise customer requirements and relate them to all stages of development
2) focus resources on the aspects of the product important to customer satisfaction
3) provide a structured and team driven product development process

Question 7

What is the house of quality?

Answer 7

House of quality diagram aids determining how a product is living up to customer needs. Used for defining the relationship between customer desired and firms/product capabilities.

Question 8

What is QFD? (Past paper definition)

Answer 8

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a graphical approach in which matrices detailing relationships between customer and design requirements and features
are mapper. It is used to understand and quantify the importance of customer needs and requirements.