Step-By-Step QFD: Customer-Driven Product Design, Second Edition

by John Terninko

Book Overview

Wouldn't it be great if you could design a product with the customer in mind - right from the very start? Well, now there's a way: Quality Function Development, or QFD, translates the needs of the consumer directly into the design and development of new products and services. By focusing on customer needs and incorporating them into every phase of the manufacturing process, it eliminates waste and improves customer satisfaction. And that means increased...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1574441108
• ISBN13: 9781574441109
• Release Date: July 1997
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 11.1" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

An excellent start

The book is well structured and as the title its shows you step by step how to perform a QFD in your organization. However is very laborious to implement. It look a good challange to implement QFD in a organization. As the author suggewst your organization has to be willing to invest moey upfromt to reap the results of a good or excellent new product introduction. Alberto Forero

Well written book about a valuable technique

I stumbled into QFD by accident: while browsing through sample drawings in Visio I spotted a "House of Quality Matrix" under Business Diagrams. The drawing looked fascinating, which led me to do a quick search on the Internet. The search yielded a large number of hits and interesting content. That, in turn, led me to this book because capturing and validating requirements is a difficult undertaking and I am always on the lookout for new techniques and tools. The book opened a whole new world to me. The opening chapter, "The Role of the Customer in Design", starts with an example of using QFD in a project and gives compelling reasons for using this technique. Subsequent chapters walk you through the mechanics of a generic design process. This prepares you for the detailed treatment of QFD that follows.Based on my initial research QFD looks simple and straightforward. However, this book reveals a rich process and set of procedures that show its real power (and complexity for large undertakings). For example, I discovered that the "house of quality" structure can have multiple matrices, each of which is linked. This gives both forward and backwards traceability, but requires painstaking attention to detail. This is where this book proves its value - it breaks this complexity down into manageable pieces and provides you with a thorough understanding of the process.The section that I found most meaningful and valuable addresses customer segments. I am an IT consultant who specializes in service delivery, so my natural focus is on strengthening alignment between IT and the business processes that IT supports. Among the things I learned from this section are: how to effectively identify customer segments and classify them, what measurements are meaningful (especially important for satisfaction measurement), and ranking and prioritizing. One of the most powerful prioritization techniques that I discovered in this book is the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). This technique is an excellent way to objectively quantify priorities and requirements. The steps are relatively simple: 1.Choose the requirements to be prioritized. 2.Set the requirements into the rows and columns of the n x n AHP matrix. 3.Perform a pair wise comparison of the requirements in the matrix according to a set criteria. 4.Sum the columns. 5.Normalize the sum of rows. 6.Calculate the row averages. However, for a large number of requirements this can quickly get complicated in a hurry. The simple math for small numbers of requirements gets replaced by sophisticated (to me) matrix techniques that are outside of my skill set when the number of requirements to be prioritized grows. Also, AHP is useful for managing requirements revealed via surveys. Most of my requirements come directly from contact with end users. I have found that a facilitated meeting using paired comparison techniques to be as valuable aas AHP. This is not covered in the book, which I found to be a minor

Overall Excellent Introduction to QFD, Good First QFD Book

Great book for persons just starting QFD within their organizations. Straight forward step-by-step chapters that build upon each other to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of QFD concepts and mechanics. Team/group excercises within each chapter make this a great introductory training manual to solidify learning of material covered in each chapter.

Our Branch Office Will Get One Too

I appreciate the way the author communicates. His style is as simple as QFD, but QFD wouldn't have been simple for me without the book.