Major benefits of quality function deployment (QFD)

Major benefits of quality function deployment (QFD)

Quality Function Deployment (QFD)-House of Quality –is an effective Management tool to drive the design process and production process with the main aim of satisfying the customer needs. The benefits of QFD are

1. A systematic way of obtaining information and presenting it.

2. Shorter product development cycle.

3. Considerably reduced start-up costs.

4. Fewer engineering changes.

5. Reduced chance of overnights during design process.

6. An environment of team work.

7. Consensus decision.

8. Everything is preserved in writing.

9. It facilitates identification of the causes of customer complaints and makes it easier to takes prompt remedical action.

10.    It is a useful tool for improving product Quality.

11.    It is a useful tool for competitive analysis of product quality.

12.    It is stabilizes quality.

13.    It cuts down on rejects and rework at the production site.

14.    It decreases claims substantially.

15.    Marketing benefits are obtained by identifying sales point.

Benefits of QFD

The main 'process' benefits of using QFD are: improved communication and sharing of information within a cross-functional team charged with developing a new product. This team will typically include people from a variety of functional groups, such as marketing, sales, service, distribution, product engineering, process engineering, procurement, and production the identification of 'holes' in the current knowledge of the design team the capture and display of a wide variety of important design information in one place in a compact form support for understanding, consensus, and decision making, especially when complex relationships and trade-offs are involved the creation of an informational base which is valuable for repeated cycles of product improvement

The main 'bottom line' benefits of using QFD are: greater likelihood of product success in the marketplace, due to the precise targeting of key customer requirements reduced overall design cycle time, mainly due to a reduction in time-consuming design changes. This is a powerful benefit: customer requirements are less likely to have changed since the beginning of the design project; and more frequent design cycles mean that products can be improved more rapidly than the competition reduced overall cost due to reducing design changes, which are not only time consuming but very costly, especially those which occur at a late stage. reduced product cost by eliminating redundant features and over-design. When to use QFD QFD is a powerful tool that leads to significant improvements in product/process performances. However, it is not a short-term answer to product development problems.

The method on which QFD is implemented may have a large impact on benefits derived and companies should take up QFD only after getting the consent and commitment of the team members. QFD provides a systematic approach to build a team perspective on what needs to be done, the best ways to do it, the best order to accomplish the tasks proposed and the staffing and resources required to enhance customer satisfaction. It is also a good format for capturing and recording/documenting decision making. Applied through the Kaizen philosophy under Total Quality Control, QFD is the most highly developed form of integrated product and process development in existence. Strengths and weaknesses of QFD