Quality Function Deployment: Satisfying Customer Needs in Business

This essay explores the application of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) as a methodology for understanding and satisfying customer needs within a business context, particularly in the phone industry. Originating in Japan in the 1960s, QFD helps organizations identify and prioritize customer requirements, translating them into specific product or service attributes. The process involves several key steps, including identifying customer needs, determining their impact, translating them into technical requirements, and developing advanced products incorporating these requirements. Challenges may arise in selecting the most important customer needs, but tools like AHP can help prioritize them. The benefits of using QFD include improved product ranking, direct alignment with customer needs, and reduced development time. The essay highlights the importance of a customer-centric approach in business and the effectiveness of QFD in achieving it. Desklib provides more resources for students.

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Quality function deployment
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Quality function deployment
When beginning an industry or a business, the primary target of the Company is to satisfy
the customers both internally or externally. However, the methodology or procedure to know
precisely what your customers need may be a challenge according to Armellini et al (2017).
Quality function deployment is one of the best methods to keenly evaluate what the customers
require in an organization and provide the expected feedback that will fully satisfy the
customers. The organization owners in Japan first applied the usage of quality function
deployment in the year 1960 in reference to Ashrafuzzaman et al (2016). During this period, they
effectively analyzed the customers’ needs and responded to them. This method brought
meaningful results to the industries in Japan, and because of that, it was applied in the United
States of America in the year 1980. From the statistics, this methodology brought many positive
impacts in the field of automotive industry.
Barad (2018) says that, when applying the quality function deployment in an
organization, the management of that business should use a product or service in the
organization. QFD incorporates about seven leadership and preparation materials to find the
customer’s needs. It then arranges the priorities in a way that the customers will automatically
choose them. The leadership tools that direct the decisions in QFD comprises of interaction
matrix, features of the product, relationship matrix, impact rating, technical challenges
competitive technical benchmark and lastly the target values citing the work of bin Ahmad
Shamsuddin et al (2015). When the organization has identified the product or a service, the high
seven pillars is applied systematically until the customer's priority is determined. For instance,
the QFD starts with the first matrix to identify the most effective quality of the product. The
attributes of the product or the service will comprise of the needs, compulsory and wows of the

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potential customers in the market. After the identification of these characteristics, the quality
function deployment uses the business purpose to focus on the next step. This step is to put the
customers’ priorities for the particular organization.
In this assignment, it is going to analyze the use of quality function deployment
methodology in an organization selling phones to identify the customers’ needs. When applying
the QFD procedure in this product, there are various steps that the business is going to look at to
fully satisfy the customers. The first procedure to get the customer needs in the phone category.
The customers may be having a range of needs; it is the work of the business to systematize the
requirements as the first step in QFD. Franceschini (2016) say that, after that, the second step is
to figure out the impact of the conditions collected on the phone that the organization wants to
sell. Some requirements have featherweight at this stage; they should be wiped out from the list
and focus on the critical needs that will truly satisfy the customers. According to the QFD
method, after determining the weight of all the requirements, the business should now change the
selected elements into a practical once. For instance, if the customers require some specific apps
on the phone, the organization should check on this. In addition to that, the customers may also
need the phone to have a particular design; the business should contact the technical team for the
support. However, while translating these needs to technical ones, the company should also make
some improvement on the phone regarding the current technology; this will also satisfy the
customer most. Lastly, the QFD methodology requires the industry to develop advanced phones
incorporating the selected requirements from the technical support team. The other thing the
organization should also integrate on the phone is the design going with the current technology.
On the other hand, a step may bring a challenge to the organization that is selecting the proper
requirements from the customers that they should incorporate in the phone. However, QFD

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provides various ways of determining the heavyweight requirements. The best method is the use
of AHP to identify the needs. AHP gives the scale of the listed priorities. It judges the needs
according to the way the customers have rated them. This method is proved the best from many
businesses that apply QFD in satisfaction of their customers.
There are benefits that the business realizes when it uses the quality function deployment
methodology according to Sarkar & Panchal (2017). The first advantage is that the product from
them, for instance, the phone, in this case, will be ranked high among the competitors when the
analysis is done. Consequently, using this method makes the company hit the customer
requirements directly because customers are the one that determines what the product should be
made of. Lastly, QFD reduces the time that may have been wasted during the development
because there is no risk of changes.

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References
Armellini, F., Pelicioni, R. A., Kaminski, P. C., & Bassetto, S. (2017). Including the voice of the
client in the creative process: a case study of the integration of Quality Function
Deployment (QFD) to the Value Proposition Design (VPD) in the service sector. The
Journal of Modern Project Management, 5(2).
Ashrafuzzaman, M., Al-Maruf, A., Mahbubul, I. M., Malek, A. A., & Mukaddes, A. M. M.
(2016). Quality function deployment approach to measure supply chain performance: a
case study on garments accessories industries. International Journal of Industrial and
Systems Engineering, 22(1), 96-120.
Barad, M. (2018). Quality Function Deployment (QFD). In Strategies and Techniques for
Quality and Flexibility (pp. 101-121). Springer, Cham.
bin Ahmad Shamsuddin, D. M., Chew, B. C., & Shin, L. H. (2015). QUALITY FUNCTION
DEPLOYMENT FOR BIO PLASTICS ADOPTION IN MALAYSIAN
INDUSTRY. Journal of Technology Management and Business, 2(2).
Franceschini, F. (2016). Advanced quality function deployment. CRC Press.
Sarkar, D., & Panchal, R. (2017). Quality Function Deployment (QFD): A Six Sigma Tool for
Performance Monitoring of Ready Mixed Concrete. framework, 4(2).