QFD is being seen as an integral part of the overall planning and implementation process as well as the enabler for the CPM (critical parameter management) process of Design for Six Sigma.
Many companies have tried to implement QFD in the past and for different reasons became discouraged. They either abandoned QFD altogether or reduced its role to that of a data documentation tool instead of the proactive planning tool it was meant to be.
QFDcapture Professional Edition
The QFD Decision ModelerQFDcapture Professional Edition is an indispensable tool for any planning process, from basic to complex. The software has a decision model focus (the Roadmap), rather than a single House of Quality (HoQ) focus. Having a decision model focus means you can set up and interlink a collection of lists, matrices, and documents to construct a decision making model for your project. This decision making model can be high level (a single HoQ) or detailed (many HoQs cascaded from one to another) or something in-between.
A QFDcapture model enables you to collect, analyze and manage qualitative data to give you an accurate definition of your competition space, your customer expectations and the needs of your business. The model will also:
- • Help you develop a prioritized list of what customers expect to see in your products, services or strategies
- • Help you translate customer expectations into specifications your designers can understand and act on
- • Help you develop an ordered list of what steps your company must take to satisfy customer requirements
- • Help you plan products, services or strategies with fewer mid-point corrections
Sample QFDcapture Professional Road Maps:
Enhanced Quality Function Deployment (EQFD)
Four Phase QFD
OAL/QPC QFD
Concurrent Product and Process Development QFD
Object Oriented Design QFD
Simple QFD (single House of Quality)
Traditional market and consumer research doesn really get a clear picture of the true product benefits most desired by customers. Too often qualitative interviews ask customers about features they want or like and stops short of probing deeply to understand why customer want what they want. This deeper understanding of customer motivation is needed to put together enough unrealized knowledge to develop innovative and different products that can win new customers and keep old customers.
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is the systematic process planners need to help understand why customers want what they want. QFD uses cross-functional teams to identify, understand and document unrealized knowledge involved in planning products, processes, services and strategies which become better then what the competition has to offer.
QFDcapture Professional Edition is the indispensable tool for any planning process, from basic to complex. The software has a decision model focus (the Roadmap), rather than a single House of Quality (HoQ) focus. Having a decision model focus means you can set up and interlink a collection of lists, matrices, and documents to construct a decision making model for your project. This decision making model can be high level (a single HoQ) or detailed (many HoQs cascaded from one to another) or something in-between.
A QFDcapture model enables you to collect, analyze and manage qualitative data to give you an accurate understanding of your competition space, your customer expectations, the constraints regulation impose and the needs of your business. The model will also:
- • Help you develop a prioritized list of what customers expect to see in your products, services or strategies
- • Help you translate customer expectations into specifications your designers can understand and act on
- • Help you develop an ordered list of what steps your company must take to satisfy customer requirements
- • Help you plan products, services or strategies with fewer mid-point corrections
- • Project Roadmap - Layout a House of Quality (HoQ) set to completely model the QFD process you wish to follow (EQFD, Goal, Four Phase, Simple etc.)
- • QFD Models of any Degree of Complexity - Combine spreadsheets and matrices as you wish to create all the types of HoQs available to the QFD process
- • Market Opportunity Maps - Produce Market Opportunity Map reports identifying the best opportunities for product improvement.
- • Relationship Tree - Generate relationship tree diagrams showing measures for each requirement in a graphical tree and branch format.
- • Templates - Print out and work with blank chart templates which are useful as documents-in-progress during team meetings.
- • Printing Spreadsheets - Print out spreadsheets as they appear in QFDcapture.
- • Larger Applications - Very large QFD models can be developed with QFDcapture
- • Windows 2000, ME, XP, Vista, 7
