Voice of the Customer - Lecture 11 Quality Function Deployment (QFD) © 2009 ~ Mark Polczynski

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 12 Scenario Planning Intellectual Property Generation Technology Roadmapping Voice of the Customer New Concept Ideation An Integrated Strategic Technology Planning and Development Environment

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 13 Voice of the Customer Input Process: Purpose ~ Reveal unrecognized customer needs - what we don’t know. ~ Validate our perceptions and plans - what we do know. Desired Strengths ~ Systematic vs. anecdotal – turns over most of the rocks. ~ Fact-based vs. opinion-based prioritization of needs. Potential Weaknesses ~ Can create inappropriate customer expectations. ~ Risks compromising intellectual property – tip our hand. ~ Can keep us from being more inventive than our customers.

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 14 QFD Resources We will be using a QFD format based on QFD Designer, available from IDEACore ( You can download a free demo version of their product from their web site. The download contains a good users manual. Another good reference is: Quality Function Deployment, by Lou Cohen. Also, here is a link to an on-line QWFD tutorial by Dr. Robert Hunt. This includes some templates you might find useful. researchclusters/cmit/tutorials/

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 15 Quality Function Deployment Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a common general method invented in Japan in the late sixties initially to support the ship building product design process. QFD has been adapted and expanded to apply to any planning process that requires: ~ identification and prioritization (whys) ~ of possible responses (hows) ~ to a given set of objectives (whats). Other formal, systematic V-O-C processes exist. We use QFD to demonstrate one way to obtain customer inputs.

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 16 HKT  QFD Origin of the term Quality Function Deployment: Hinshitsu  quality; qualities; features; attributes Kino  function; mechanization Tenkai  deployment; diffusion; development; evolution So, somehow, we ended up calling this “Quality Function Deployment”, But it just as well could have been “Attributes Mechanization Evolution”.

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 17 What specific problems are solved by QFD? Poor understanding of customer needs - ~ Solve the wrong problems, miss the big problems. Failure to strategically prioritize efforts - ~ No time and money left to solve the most important problems. Willingness to take on unmanageable risks - ~ Don’t know what we are committing to. Overreliance on formal specifications - ~ Spec often misses “contextual cues”, e.g., why are we building this in the first place? Fixing the wrong problems - ~ Often times forced to ship product before all bugs are eliminated, so did we fix enough of the most important bugs?

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 18 NOTE! QFD takes significant time and effort to do correctly. It is explicitly (visibly) time-consuming – meetings, reviews, delays. BUT… Every issue resolved by QFD before-the-fact.. Must be resolved after the fact anyway! Pay me now, or pay me later - with interest.

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 19 Purpose of QFD 1.Find out what your customer’s specific needs are (WHATs), 2.Determine the things you need to work on (HOWs), 3.Determine priorities of what you should work on (WHYS).

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 110 The following is an example of QFD applied to the “Perfect Mousetrap”, from QFD Designer. Example QFD

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 111 : str. pos. : med. pos. : wk. pos. + : med. neg. # : str. neg. The Whole Nine Yards Please remain calm, it’s not that bad! Whys

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 112 QFD Diagram is sometimes call the “House of Quality” because of the shape. But people use the term “House of Quality” for other diagrams, too.

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 113 Building a QFD Matrix It’s not as bad as it looks! You can build it one section at a time. –Phase 1: Whats –Phase 2: Hows –Phase 3: Whys Let’s look at the steps in building the matrix…

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 114 QFD Phase 1: Whats Phase 1: Whats Phase 2: Hows Phase 3: Whys

Voice of the Customer - Lecture Gather WHATs - These are the desired effects you are trying to bring about. Not problems or solutions! Phase 1

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 116 Phase 1 2.Quantify Importances of WHATs Rated by customer, not by you.

Voice of the Customer - Lecture Identify WHAT-WHAT Correlations - How do the WHATs affect each other? Phase 1 : str. pos. : med. pos. : wk. pos. + : med. neg. # : str. neg.

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 118 Many negative correlations tells customer that product will be expensive and will take a long time to develop. Phase 1 : str. pos. : med. pos. : wk. pos. + : med. neg. # : str. neg. A trap that kills quickly is not easy to set, so this is a strong negative correlation.

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 119 Phase 1 : str. pos. : med. pos. : wk. pos. + : med. neg. # : str. neg. Controls customer expectations! Customer may choose to re-prioritize items with strong negative interactions.

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 120 Sneak Preview : str. pos. : med. pos. : wk. pos. + : med. neg. # : str. neg. Negative correlations are prime targets for “ideation” processes. “How can we make a trap that kills quickly and is easy to set?”

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 121 Details of WHATs section Logical grouping of WHATs… Eliminates MiceLuringEffective Luring Good Camouflage EffectivenessReliable Small Kills Quickly etc… Easy to UseEasy to Bait Easy to Set Easy to Empty etc… SafetySafe to Set Safe from Kids etc… ControlsGovernmentEPA etc…

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 122 Phase 1 4.Gather Competitor Ratings Your customer’s assessment of your current offering vs. your competitors.

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 123 Phase 1 5. Determine Required Improvement - Which really needs improvement?.

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 124 Phase 1 What will your strategy be? What will your strategy be?

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 125 Thus Ends Phase 1 - Whats Phase 1

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 126 WHATs tend to show up in similar forms for different customers/applications/products, Thus, there will always be some basic commonality to the list of WHATs. You probably don’t need to start from scratch every time once you’ve done a few of these, You can probably build a common library of generic WHATs, Identifying WHATs in this structured environment gets much easier with experience! Hints on Identifying WHATs

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 127 You still need to interview the customers to get WHATs, Just in case a new need is emerging. Further, this is a great way to build good customer relations, Even if you already know all the answers, Since “sympathetic listening” is a powerful tool. Nevertheless!

Voice of the Customer - Lecture 128 QFD Phase 2 – HOWs Phase 1: Whats Phase 2: Hows Phase 3: Whys