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Unit 11: Quality Function Deployment

He explains. “We were less than four Sigma and Motorola was close to six. We couldn’t Notes
believe someone was 2,000 times better than us. It really got our attention.
“Six Sigma really will work for anybody. It’s management by fact, not emotion.”

MU consultant Paul Zaura concurs. “In a math sense, Six Sigma is a known quantity,” he
asserts. “As improvements increase, expectations increase. Customer perceptions will
change, and they will drive you to places you never new existed.
“You also must look at the cultural aspects and changing behaviours. Many corporate
cultures are fear-based; mistakes aren’t tolerated, and people learn to hide defects. Six
Sigma flourishes in an open and safe environment.”
Six Sigma champions say there are plenty of things to count, measure and benchmark
regardless of the type of business, whether it’s an attorney’s office or a car rental company.
And within a company, you can look at all kinds of divisions – personnel policies,
warehousing, security, how to run the cafeteria.
“If you’re not improving, you’re going down,” warns Zaura. “Six Sigma is a philosophy of
continuous improvement and measurement to drive the direction of goals. Its concepts
aren’t earthshaking: Talk to customers and find out what the defects are. Work on big
errors first. Try to decide how they happen and how to correct them permanently.”

“Whether it’s handling paperwork, an idea, a customer call or a hard product, there must
be a process for it. That’s probably one of the biggest concepts for people to grasp. Then
you track your process using simple tools like Pareto charts, cause-and-effect diagrams
and benchmarking. You compare what you have to a similar industry or process.”
Perhaps Six Sigma’s biggest mandate is never rest.

Companies that are content with their current quality levels simply don’t understand
quality’s true challenge. They need to determine not only the defect levels their customers
experience but also internal defects that cause rework, additional inspections and higher
product costs. Once a company has fully assessed itself, then improvement can really
begin.
And no philosopher or cynic can quibble with improvement.
Source: http://www.qualitydigest.com/july98/html/sixsigma.html

11.8 Summary

Quality Function Development is a scientific technique for translating the voice of the
customer into the development of products and services.
The technique was invented by Akashi Fukuhara of Japan and first applied with very good
results at Toyota.

The purpose of Professors Mizuno and Akao was to develop a quality assurance method
that would design customer satisfaction into a product before it was manufacturer.

QFD is a comprehensive quality system that systematically links the needs of the customer
with various business functions and organizational processes, such as marketing, design,
quality, production, manufacturing, sales, etc., aligning the entire company toward
achieving a common goal.
The success of QFD in any organization depend on the team involved in QFD process and
it requires commitment from project and team members and also significant amount of
efforts are needed from each one of the team members.

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