QFD Quality Function Deployment Software

Processing QFD with PathMaker

Applying QFD is much more than documenting the House of Quality. QFD can very well be defined as process. PathMaker is an excellent solution to define all the steps required to run QFD as it contains management tools that assist in building the content of a QFD matrix.

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QFD steps with PathMaker

Usually, the QFD process starts with listing the key customer requirements. As a team-ready software PathMaker allows to use its brainstorm tool to collect customer requirements. The affinity diagram tool can be used to sort these requirements and build group of requirements. The step also serves to raise a discussion about the customer requirements which often leads to a better understanding of these.

Rating the importance of the key customer requirements continues the discussion of the previous step. PathMaker contains a tool named Consensus Builder which is of great use to end up with a suitable analysis of the importance of the customer requirements.

It is important to understand the position of the own product in the market against competitive products. Again this rating can be assisted by the Consensus Builder as solutions are differently perceived by different people.

The big next step in QFD is the entire team asking for each customer requirement, what product feature or performance will serve this requirement. Further the team needs to measure the success of the feature or performance to meet the requirement. There is a huge need for discussion which can be done excellently within PathMaker. Even more, PathMaker allows for virtual teams which means that the team members do not need to meet on a specific time at a determined location. This way you even can build teams where the team members are located in different time zones.

Then the team needs to analyse the relationship between customer requirements and features/performances. PathMaker contains a Cause and Effects tool that can assist to visualise such relationships. Further the Consensus Builder can be employed to assign a relationship value, i.e. strong, weak or no relationship.

Finally, the team can list the technical or performance data for each feature.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD)-Matrix in PathMaker

So far we were concerned with single steps within the QFD process. Of course, the results need to be recorded somewhere. PathMaker provides forms on QFD that enable you to create a QFD matrix. This QFD matrix then can be included into your project pathway on which you define your QFD process. The QFD matrix provided comprises the seven tasks above. However, you are free to edit this form in PathMaker's form tool and make it suitable to your specific needs:

List the Key Customer Requirements
Rate the importance of the Key Customer Requirements
List competitive products and your own current and planned products.
Rate products (competition and own ones) against customer requirements.
Translate customer requirements into product features or technologies
Rate the relationships between requirements and features
List the technical or performance data for each key feature or technology, for yourselves and your competition.

Results of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Matrix

Though the QFD process and creating the matrix are a major effort, this is hardly the end of the QFD process. This only was preparation to learn from the results. Typical questions can be responded after preparing the QFD matrix such as:

Are we focusing our energies in the high leverage areas?
Is your planned product a lot more competitive?
Which technologies or features will have the most impact?
Highlight the gaps or new ideas that have promise, especially in highly rated columns.

The PathMaker Form on Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

The tools of PathMaker provide assistance in creating the QFD Matrix

QFD (Quality Function Deployment) is nothing that is done just for itself. It is the objective to use the results of QFD to make decisions and introduce changes to products and processes. In PathMaker a QFD Matrix can be included into projects such as strategic planning, product improvement or process improvement. This way PathMaker is not just a QFD tool but integrates the QFD process into an overall project.

PathMaker is a unique software that helps you to systematically create a better organisation.

You can use PathMaker for much more management projects than just QFD, e.g. planning a strategy, solving problems, improving processes, driving out waste, balanced scorecard, benchmarking, business process re-engineering, six sigma ...

To learn more about PathMaker please visit the PathMaker webpage.