A synopsis of recent methodological enhancements on quality function deployment

Abstract

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a concept and mechanism for translating the "voice of the customer" through the various stages of product planning, engineering, and manufacturing into a final product. Notwithstanding the rapid growth of the QFD literature, development of systematic procedures for an effective use of QFD has scarcely been addressed. In this paper, we first review the limitations of the existing QFD framework, and then present a synopsis of the recent methodological enhancement on QFD. Significance: The limitations of the cur-rent QFD practice mainly come from the fact that a house of quality chart requires subjective, interrelated, and complicated information. In order to enhance the usefulness of QFD in practice, systematic procedures alleviating such difficulties should be developed and employed.