Product development using quality function deployment

WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IN OPERATIONS (EM-5050)
FALL 2016
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT USING QUALITY FUNCTION
DEPLOYMENT
INSTRUCTOR: - Dr. TARUN GUPTA
DATE OF SUBMISSION: - TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2016
SUBMITTED BY: - DAVID HEISE, GAGAN VIJAY,
TRUSHART WAGH

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT USING QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT
WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY P a g e | 2
Table of Contents
I. ABSTRACT: -...............................................................................................................................4
II. INTRODUCTION: -.................................................................................................................5
III. LITERATURE REVIEW: -.....................................................................................................6
 Adiano & Roth (1994 ) study found the following: -..............................................................6
a. Traditional QFD: - ................................................................................................................6
b. Dynamic QFD: - ....................................................................................................................8
 Eldin (2002) study found the following: -................................................................................8
a. Affinity Diagram:..................................................................................................................8
IV. STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES...........................................................................................9
V. SPECIFIC ISSUES AND CURRENT PROBLEMS .................................................................9
 METHODOLOGY OF QFD..................................................................................................10
 VOICE OF CUSTOMER.......................................................................................................10
VI. QFD METHODOLOGY FLOW...........................................................................................11
 PRODUCT PLANNING STEPS BY USING QFD..............................................................12
 QFD PROCESS.......................................................................................................................13
VII. ANALYSIS & IMPORTANT FINDINGS............................................................................14
VIII. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................................16
IX. REFERENCES........................................................................................................................17

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 Deployment of customer wants and needs for product, process and design.......6
Figure 2 Conceptual House of Quality...................................................................................7
Figure 3 Conceptual model of dynamic QFD........................................................................8
Figure 4 Typical Quality Function Deployment methodology ..........................................11
Figure 5 Universal template of QFD Matrix (House of Quality).......................................11
Figure 6 Affinity diagram for 2017 Coolant Business........................................................14
Figure 7 QFD House of Quality diagram applied to 2017 coolant business.....................15

I. ABSTRACT: -
The scope of our semester project is using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) as a
tool for continuous improvement in product development. By listening to the
customer’s, Flexfab can place the needs of their customer’s in a ranked structure and
create a plan for a product that is organized to meet the criteria specified by the
customer. This method will give Flexfab an edge over the competition by reducing the
product and service development times while increasing customer satisfaction with
decisions that apply directly to what the customers wants. QFD will be used in the
product planning stage for Flexfab which shows how QFD facilitates good
communication, product planning, and decision making as it directly applies to
customer needs. The quality aspect of QFD is assured in the design phase which shifts
quality control from manufacturing quality control to product design control
improving quality of parts supplied to the customer. The end goal of QFD is to
produce new products sooner than the competition with improved quality in the
process.

II. INTRODUCTION: -
In today’s competitive business market companies like Flexfab need to offer their
customers the products they want, standard products will no longer work for every
customer application which requires customized product options that increase the
number of products a customer must manufacture and supply with the same if not
more product quality expected by the customer. Therefore, companies must offer
mass customization of products to stay competitive and meet the customer’s needs.
This in turn causes increased number of products offered by the company but that
doesn’t guarantee increased profits just because you supply more part numbers. To
protect Flexfab’s investment in the products it offers the company has to determine
value based products that both satisfy the customer demands while also restricting the
number of products that are offered. If products differ in things such as pressure
ranges or part routings, then more than one product is required but if a part series has
the same traits but differs in part lengths a standard cut to length product can be
developed to meet the requirements of multiple parts and only one sequence of
product development which saves time as well as money.
With Flexfab being in the built to order product market it had to look for a product
development method that would ensure the company meet customer requirements by
building the right product variations for specific applications. Mass customization of
products ensures a high-quality development of a range of products but also causes
increased cost to carry those products i.e. inventory cost, materials cost, tooling cost,
etc. Mass customization also takes a considerable amount of time to complete because
you are making a lot of highly specialized products that need to be quoted, designed,
and built within a short time frame. The biggest advantage of using a QFD
methodology is to reduce the product planning phase of a product, by reducing the
setup time of the quote process Flexfab can build parts sooner and supply the
customer with products they need as well as when they are needed.
The reason for the implementation of QFD for the Flexfab quote and design process
was to combat a huge increase of new business that was awarded to Flexfab by one
customer. This customer lost their silicone supplier and needed to source one hundred
and twenty new coolant hoses and fifteen new charge air assemblies for their 2017
model line vehicles. By using the product planning phase of QFD we will document
how Flexfab will develop a house of quality matrix and the steps required to follow
and analyse the matrix as it effects Flexfab’s product development strategy. In this
paper, we will cover the statement of objectives for this project, a literature review of
QFD, specific issues and current problems in reference to the statement of objectives,
followed by the methodology of the process with analysis/findings and then ending
with our results and conclusions.

III. LITERATURE REVIEW: -
The literature review basically consists of how the house of quality and affinity diagram is
used to explain quality function deployment. The articles reviewed basically gives us an idea
as to how house of quality is prepared. The following paragraph is the review of that article.
 Adiano & Roth (1994 ) study found the following: -
a. Traditional QFD: -
One organized method of managing customer inputs is a basic design methodology
prominently known as Quality Function Deployment (QFD). QFD is defined as “a systematic
way of ensuring that the development of product features, characteristics, and specifications,
as well as the selection and development of process equipment, methods, and controls, are
driven by the demands of the customer or marketplace”. The QFD methodology originally
was developed in Japan by Dr Yoji Akao at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in the late
1960s. The method initially was referred to as “Quality Tables” and later evolved into today’s
QFD. (Adiano & Roth, 1994 )
In order to trace customer requirements from the beginning of product planning down to the
most detailed instructions at the operating level, QFD uses an interlocking structure to link
ends and means at each stage. (Adiano & Roth, 1994 )
Figure 1 Deployment of customer wants and needs for product, process and design
The matrix display’s key customer requirements (what’s) and their relationship to technical
design requirements (how’s). Customers evaluate their requirements on two factors: “relative
importance of attributes” and “perceived quality relative to the competition”, While QFD
applications initially lead to more producible and competitively superior products, the
traditional approach is relatively static. QFDs are benchmark snapshots of relationships at
one point in time, usually at the front-end of product or platform design. Consequently,
measures of customer assessment competitors, overall satisfaction, and technical
specifications are derived at the beginning of the development cycle. Updates, if any, usually
occur when the product or product platform is being redesigned or re-engineered. Moreover,
because building a house of quality can be a painful and tedious process, most firms never
build more than just the first house in the deployment cycle, e.g. linking customer
requirements and engineering characteristics. (Adiano & Roth, 1994 )

Figure 2 Conceptual House of Quality
The traditional QFD model resulted in better initial product designs; e.g. fewer start-up
problems, fewer design changes and shorter product development cycles.
Although the traditional approach is a necessary step, it fails to adequately
deliver a holistic and dynamic view of customer requirements across the value
chain elements. For instance, manufacturers continuously ship products without
considering the complex relationships between customer satisfaction and
product, service, and supplier quality. Taking a holistic, longer-term view, it is desirable to
update dynamically the process and product parameters based on attributes that are important
to customers. (see Figure 3). Since traditional QFD methodology is oriented towards ad-hoc,
front-end product and process planning; it lacks a continuous focus to improve customer
satisfaction over the product life cycle (e.g. after the initial design is completed). A major
problem remains: how can a firm narrow the gaps created by static QFD applications? By
incorporating a feedback loop from customers to manufacturers, designers, suppliers, and
after-sales service, the firm has the opportunity to monitor the changing pulse of the
customer, and thus, fine-tune important products and process parameters routinely. For those
parameters requiring significant changes, the system-exposed product features are fed back to
the designers for the next product release. Systematic capture of customers’ experience with
the product can produce invaluable market and process research information to be exploited
for future competitive advantage. For example, researchers have suggested the coupling of
QFD and statistical process control. (Adiano & Roth, 1994 )

Figure 3 Conceptual model of dynamic QFD
b. Dynamic QFD: -
The house of quality structure remains the primary inter-functional planning
and communications model in dynamic QFD. To differentiate dynamic QFD from
the traditional QFD, the basic structure is newly defined as the house of the customer. The
first house of the customer maps manufacturing product-process
parameters to customer requirements. Subsequent matrices can be used to cascade
manufacturing product-process parameters to other value chain partners such as materials
suppliers. Tying together these three value chain partners (customers, manufacturer, and
suppliers) qualifies this approach as a state of the art, for example, decision-support system
for continuous improvement. (Adiano & Roth, 1994 )
 Eldin (2002) study found the following: -
a. Affinity Diagram:
The affinity diagram is a tool used to organize the data collected from the focus groups
sessions. It provides a method of arranging a set of unstructured ideas in an overall
hierarchical structure. Each idea is often written on a separate 3 X 5 card. When two ideas
intuitively seem similar, they are posted next to each other. As the cards are properly posted,
they gradually form groups of ideas that together suggest some major topic or theme. Then,
these topics in turn, are grouped into higher-level themes, and so on. The goal is to achieve a
hierarchy with five to 10 main ideas at the top (primary level). The ideas at the next level
down (secondary level) provide definitions for the primary level. The next level down defines
the details of the secondary level and so on. (Eldin, Mar 2002)

IV. STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES
1. Steps required to implement QFD
2. What products will be integrated with QFD
3. Setup the required products with QFD processes
4. Reduce the product design time by using QFD
5. Rate customer satisfaction after QFD implementation
V. SPECIFIC ISSUES AND CURRENT PROBLEMS
The first specific issue in trying to implement QFD into product planning process is obtaining
management approval. Without some sort of approval from the organization QFD cannot be
implemented properly because it is not in the approved procedures. While Flexfab does not
practice QFD as part of the quote and design process we were allowed to try this project for
new transition business. This new transition business required expedited quote and part
design times to setup parts for a customer with a short lead time. This quick turnaround time
allowed us to test the theory of QFD and produce products within the customers lead time.
The second issue in implementing QFD is to get the customer involved in the process. QFD
requires input from the customer to get a ranked structure of importance which is talked
about in the methodology part of this paper. Flexfab took on this issue by scheduling weekly
meetings with the customer where product design, delivery timing, specifications, and part
quality were discussed. This form of concurrent engineering ensured that everybody from
sales to shipping was on the same page in the Flexfab plant as well as informing the customer
to exactly what stage of the process we were in for each new part of the transition business.
The third current problem when using a QFD system was to determine what parts to
implement QFD on. With only management approval to use this new technique on the new
transition business only new parts for one customer were going to be quoted and setup using
QFD, other product supplied by Flexfab to other customers was to follow the traditional
processes.
Since Flexfab has never used QFD in their quote and product development process before it
was determined only to use part of the QFD methodology. The product planning phase was
the only phase of the four-phase methodology that would be implemented for this project.
Due to time constraints, it was not applicable to implement the part deployment, the process
planning, or the process and quality control. QFD should not be used on large complex
projects which is the reasoning for only using it for a subsystem of the whole process.
The last specific issue was trying to get a multi-functional team established that would only
be focused on this particular customer until the transition business was complete. The whole
business cannot step even with the increased business from one large customer so an
individual from sales, engineering, quality, and production was established to handle all of
the new business. This allowed for adequate time from each department of the business so
that everybody was working together and if problems arise it could be answered by the team
instead of bouncing different answers from department to department.

 METHODOLOGY OF QFD
Quality Function Deployment sources most of its data from the source: Voice of
Customer. The Voice of Customer is taken on record through a number of ways: surveys,
field reports, feedback forms etc. This is very useful in plotting down the customer’s stated
and unstated needs.
In the case of Flexfab, the company primarily manufactures hoses, sleeves and connectors
for a variety of areas (namely aerospace & automobile sectors) and the customer can have
demands which can be either stated or unstated in nature because the companies may add
specifications or tolerances not applicable to the silicone industry. Those demands are in
need to addressed in an orderly fashion such that customer satisfaction is maintained up to
desired limits this is called capturing the “Voice of the Customer”.
 VOICE OF CUSTOMER
The process of capturing the voice of the customer is described in the papers on
Product Definition and Steps for Performing QFD. It is important to remember that there
is no monotonous voice of the customer. Customer voices are diverse. In consumer
markets, there are a variety of different needs. Information is gathered from market research
methods, Gemba visits, or other means should therefore be restated into customer needs.
Quality Function Deployment requires that the basic customer needs are identified.
Frequently, customers will try to express their needs in terms of “how” the need can be
satisfied and not in terms of “what” the need is. This limits consideration of development
alternatives. Development and marketing personnel should ask “why” until they truly
understand what the root need is. Breakdown general requirements into more specific
requirements by probing what is needed. One hose can pass or fail determined by the
environment to which the hose is subjected to, by understanding the customer needs from
day one can greatly reduce wasted time engineering products that would otherwise not
work.
In addition to “stated” or “spoken” customer needs, “unstated” or “unspoken” needs or
opportunities should be identified. Needs that are assumed by customers and, therefore not
verbalized, can be identified through preparation of a function tree. These needs normally
are not included in the QFD matrix, unless it is important to maintain focus on one or more
of these needs.
Excitement opportunities (new capabilities or unspoken needs that will cause customer
excitement) are identified through the voice of the engineer, marketing, or customer
support representative. These can also be identified by observing customers use or
maintain products and recognizing opportunities for improvement. Plant visits by Flexfab
employees gave the design team the understanding of different product applications as
well as defining new performance matrices not thought of before such as the simple
characteristic of installation force. Installation force is not usually included on a product
drawing but is important to the customer because it determines how much effort it takes
to install the product which directly effects productivity.

VI. QFD METHODOLOGY FLOW
The most basic Quality Function Deployment employed by companies
worldwide involves four phases over the entire course of product development. This
entire methodology is showcased below: -
Figure 4 Typical Quality Function Deployment methodology
The most widely used template for using QFD (also known as House of
Quality) is shown below:
Figure 5 Universal template of QFD Matrix (House of Quality)

 PRODUCT PLANNING STEPS BY USING QFD
As customer needs are fully plotted out, we tend to get a clear picture of the
quantity and quality of data that should go into the QFD. The following steps should
be observed: -
1. Customer needs or requirements are stated on the left side of the matrix as shown
below. These are organized by category based on the affinity diagrams. Insure the
customer needs or requirements reflect the desired market segment(s). Address the
unspoken needs (assumed and excitement capabilities). For each need or
requirement, state the customer priorities using a 1 to 5 rating.
2. Evaluate prior generation products against competitive products. Use surveys,
customer meetings or focus groups/clinics to obtain feedback. Include competitor’s
customers to get a balanced perspective. Identify price points and market segments
for products under evaluation. Identify warranty, service, reliability, and customer
complaint problems to identify areas of improvement. Based on this, develop a
product strategy.
3. Establish product requirements or technical characteristics to respond to customer
requirements and organize into related categories. Characteristics should be
meaningful, measurable, and global.
4. Develop relationships between customer requirements and product requirements or
technical characteristics. Use symbols for strong, medium and weak relationships. Be
sparing with the strong relationship symbol. Check if all customer needs or
requirement been addressed.
5. Develop a technical evaluation of prior generation products and competitive
products. Obtain other relevant data such as warranty or service repair occurrences
and costs and consider this data in the technical evaluation.
6. Develop preliminary target values for product requirements or technical
characteristics.
7. Determine potential positive and negative interactions between product requirements
or technical characteristics using symbols for strong or medium, positive or negative
relationships. Too many positive interactions suggest potential redundancy in “the
critical few” product requirements or technical characteristics. Focus on negative
interactions – consider product concepts or technology to overcome these potential
trade-offs’ or consider the trade-off’s in establishing target values.
8. Calculate importance ratings. Assign a weighting factor to relationship symbols (9-3-
1, 4-2-1, or 5-3-1). Multiply the customer importance rating by the weighting factor
in each box of the matrix and add the resulting products in each column.
9. Develop a difficulty rating (1-5-point scale, five being very difficult and risky) for
each product requirement or technical characteristic. Avoid too many difficult/high
risk items as this will likely delay development and exceed budgets. Assess whether
the difficult items can be accomplished within the project budget and schedule.

10. Analyse the matrix and finalize the product development strategy and product
plans. Determine required actions and areas of focus. Finalize target values.
Determine items for further QFD deployment. To maintain focus on “the critical
few”, less significant items may be ignored with the subsequent QFD matrices.
 QFD PROCESS
Quality Function Deployment begins with product planning; continues with
product design and process design; and finishes with process control, quality control,
testing, equipment maintenance, and training. From the limitations of this project listed
earlier the only phase implemented was the product planning phase.
QFD is synergistic with multi-function product development teams. It can provide a
structured process for these teams to begin communicating, making decisions and
planning the product. It is a useful methodology, along with product development teams,
to support a concurrent engineering or integrated product development approach.
Quality Function Deployment, by its very structure and planning approach, requires that
more time be spent up-front in the development process making sure that the team
determines, understands and agrees with what needs to be done before plunging into
design activities. As a result, less time will be spent downstream because of differences of
opinion over design issues or redesign because the product was not on target. It leads to
consensus decisions, greater commitment to the development effort, better coordination,
and reduced time over the course of the development effort.

VII. ANALYSIS & IMPORTANT FINDINGS
Starting with step one of the product planning steps for QFD Flexfab had to capture the voice
of the customer. A technical conference was setup between the customers engineering group
and the Flexfab team tasked with taking on and completing the new transition business
consisting of one hundred and twenty new coolant hoses and fifteen new charge air
assemblies for the customers 2017 model year production. While communicating with the
customer an affinity diagram was created to capture all of the customer’s needs. The needs
were then classified into categories that most closely related to those segments.
Figure 6 Affinity diagram for 2017 Coolant Business
While in the technical conference previous parts supplied to the customer and its distribution
locations were discussed with both positives and negatives for Flexfab’s product that were
directly compared to Flexfab’s competition (Thermopol). Flexfab at the time did not
currently have a sales agreement with the customer but they supplied the same hose as
Thermopol for the aftermarket industry so that the products were compared to each specific
customer part number side by side. The customer rated Flexfab’s products directly to
Thermopol with any differences being discussed so that the Flexfab team could have a clear
understanding of what was expected moving forward.
After the technical meeting the Flexfab team defined the product requirements for the new
business based on the information collected in the affinity diagram. These requirements that
were classified into categories were then given customer priorities on a scale of 1 to 5
determined by the level of importance stressed by the customer in the technical meeting.
With the classified requirements determined from the customer the team started work on
creating the QFD matrix (House of Quality). Because department approval for QFD was only

allowed for a trial project it was only completed for the first phase regarding product
planning. Ideally you want to complete all four phases to reap the greatest benefit from QFD.
Figure 7 QFD House of Quality diagram applied to 2017 coolant business
Analysing the product matrix Flexfab determined the group had to focus on the number of
plies for each hose based on the importance rating provided by the QFD matrix. To determine
the number of plies for each hose the team looked at the part version reports supplied by the
customer and built experimental hoses with both in-house and outsourced material (China’s
material) to determine pressure ranges for the different constructions or plies. Hoses built
consisted of a range of hose sizes and had varying constructions i.e. 3 ply, 4 ply, or 5 ply.
Once the varying hoses were burst tested according to the requirements specified by the
customer specification a formal report was supplied to the customer reporting the results. The
next task the group focused on was the manufacturing location and pressured by the customer
to meet a specific price point it was determined by the group to manufacture all new hoses
out of Flexfabs China facility. With the manufacturing location determined both the material
reinforcement and reinforcement weave type was defined by China’s capability and available
materials. These reinforcement materials and type also had to be considered to meet the
customer’s technical specification which resulted in more prototype builds this time at the
China facility which were then tested in the research and development department to
determine if they met the requirements. Hose color and ASTM material callout was given by
the customer’s specification and had to be followed which resulted in new silicone
development worked on by material engineers at Flexfab. Implementing a QFD matrix for the
product planning step was incremental in focusing the engineering team on tasks that had to
be completed before manufacturing and order placement could take place. Without the
benefit of having a QFD process Flexfab would not have been able to plan for every part
number from the transition business because it would take too long to quote each hose
individually which would miss the customers expected receiving date.

VIII. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
This paper presented a methodology and discussed the implementation of the
methodology as it related to the QFD process. The QFD process was used for one project as it
related to the quote/development process of coolant and charge air hoses for Volvo Trucks.
Steps to implement QFD were as follows
1. Create a cross functional QFD team
2. Capture the voice of the customer
3. Prioritize customer needs
4. Complete the QFD matrix
5. Analyse the matrix to determine what tasks to handle first
The second objective was to determine what products would be integrated into the
QFD process, which consisted of the one hundred and twenty coolant hoses and fifteen
charge air hoses. Based on the success of this project, management will determine if the
company will continue with the QFD process for every customer or just the projects that
involve a high number of parts to be setup at once.
By using the affinity diagram and the house of quality matrix a product line was setup to
fulfil the needs of the customer based on what needs and part numbers were required to fulfil
the order for the transition business.
The product design time was reduced by QFD from a 2-week lead time per part to
twenty parts being quoted per week. This was achieved by analysing the matrix and design
products that would fulfil the needs of the customer. By knowing what was required the
Flexfab team could focus on the quotation for each part that had a standardized construction
determined from the QFD matrix. This was the reasoning for the decrease in lead time,
engineers no longer had to submit quote sheets with exceptions on them that would then have
to be worked through with the customer, the team had already determined an approved
construction and could therefore speed up the process by developing a standardized drawing
and cost dependent on hose size.
The last objective to complete was to rate customer satisfaction which Flexfab tied to
its supplier rating cards. After the sales agreement with the customer Flexfab was held to a
delivery standard where parts must be supplied on time, in the correct quantities, and lastly to
the agreed upon level of quality determined by the part drawings. I am pleased to report
Flexfab’s scorecard rating of 98 out of 100%, zero of the 10,000 parts currently shipped to
the customer were rejected for material or build issues the reason for the 98% rating was
attributed to one pallet being mislabelled. Volvo was so pleased with Flexfabs ability to
quote, design, and supply parts quickly that they have named Flexfab as their only approved
silicone supplier.
For this project the QFD process has been identified as a tool to aide in product
development. The QFD process has improved Flexfab’s method of product development by
reducing the lead time to develop an acceptable product based on specific features. By
knowing what the customer truly wants engineers can design parts that will meet those needs
and eliminate the time wasted developing part iterations that meet what the customer wants to
what the supplier can actually build. This in turn has reduced cost in engineering changes by
only going through one part iteration for each new part setup. This process has also applied
quality into each new product ensuring the customer gets the exact parts they needed. Lastly
this process has helped develop and grow working relationships with a new customer that can
help aid in decisions for future products as well as increased trust that Flexfab will supply
quality products on time every time.

IX. REFERENCES
Adiano, C., & Roth, A. V. (1994 ). Beyond the House of Quality: Dynamic QFD.
Benchmarking for Quality Management & Technology, Volume: 1 Issue: 1, 25 - 37.
Customer-Focused Devlopment with QFD. (2016, November 12). Retrieved from
http:/www.npd-solutions.com/qfd.html
Eldin, N. (Mar 2002). A promising planning tool: Quality function deployment. Cost
Engineering Volume 44, 28-36.
Ionica, A. C., & Leba, M. (2015). QFD Integrated in New Product Devlopment - Biometric
Identification System Case Study. Procedia Economics and Finance Volume 23, 986-
991.
Voice of Customer Table (VOCT). (2016, November 12). Retrieved from http://asq.org/learn-
about-quality/qfd-quality-function-deployment/overview/voice-of-the-customer-
table.html

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