Quality Function Deployment (QFD)
Translating Customer Needs into Technical Reality with the House of Quality
What is Quality Function Deployment?
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a structured methodology used to translate customer requirements—the "Voice of the Customer" (VOC)—into detailed engineering specifications for a product or service. The primary tool of QFD is the House of Quality, a matrix that connects what the customer wants to how the organization can deliver it. It's a roadmap for prioritizing design efforts on what truly matters to the customer.
Key Components of the House of Quality
The "House of Quality" gets its name from its house-like shape. Each section has a specific purpose:
- Customer Requirements (The "Whats"): The left "wall" of the house, listing the wants and needs gathered from the customer.
- Importance to Customer: A ranking of how critical each customer requirement is, typically on a 1-5 scale.
- Technical Requirements (The "Hows"): The "ceiling" of the house, listing the engineering characteristics or design parameters that can be measured and controlled.
- Relationship Matrix: The main "room" of the house, where the relationships between customer needs and technical requirements are scored (e.g., strong, medium, weak).
- Correlation Matrix (The "Roof"): Shows how the technical requirements interact with each other—do they support or conflict with one another?
- Technical Priorities: The "floor" or "basement" of the house, which calculates the importance of each technical requirement based on the customer needs it affects. This is the primary output of the matrix.
Brief History & Purpose
QFD was developed in Japan in the late 1960s by quality experts Yoji Akao and Shigeru Mizuno. It was first implemented at Mitsubishi's Kobe shipyard and later popularized by Toyota and its suppliers. The core purpose of QFD is to ensure that the Voice of the Customer is not lost during the complex process of design, engineering, and manufacturing.
By systematically linking customer desires to technical functions, QFD helps teams focus resources on the most critical features. This proactive approach prevents costly late-stage design changes, shortens development time, and ultimately leads to higher customer satisfaction and market success.
How to Use This Tool
- Use the tabs to navigate between the different input sections.
- Customer Needs & Technical Specs: Type a requirement/spec into the text field and click the green `+` button to add it to the list. Remove items with the red `-` button.
- Relationships & Correlations: Simply select a value from the dropdowns. Your changes are saved automatically.
- Click Generate House of Quality to build the matrix and see the prioritized technical requirements.
- Use Load Example for a pre-filled demonstration or Export to Excel to save your work.
QFD Tool - House of Quality Inputs
Define relationships between customer needs and technical specifications. Changes are saved automatically.
Define correlations between technical specifications (Roof of the House). Changes are saved automatically.
Prioritized Technical Requirements
| Technical Requirement | Priority Score | Priority | Rank |
|---|