Quality function deployment

Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

Introduction
Clients or customers have expectations and desires concerning the performance and appearance of the product or the content of a service activity which they believe they should, or could, obtain under given circumstances. Probably the most important of these is price, though time performance and consistency, product life and safety may also be important. In addition, some customers may have special expectations related to their personal needs or how the product or service links with some other product or service in which they have an interest. The negotiation of quality in the above sense may be straightforward. Suppliers and customers may be in regular contact with each other, both knowledgeable, have no great imbalance of power or bargaining between them and be keen to achieve a settled, stable deal the negotiation of quality is much more variable and unstable than is sometimes thought (Blackburn, Curran, & North 1998). The widespread existence of customer complaint departments, consumer protection legislation and inter-firm disputes, are evidence that conflicts can occur (Blackburn, Curran, & North 1998). Quality is an important capability that businesses should have. It is needed to maintain the good relationship between a company and its clients. Based from the need to provide quality to clients, the idea of quality function deployment was developed. The paper will apply the QFD model to a product or service within a certain organization. The paper will discuss the ease with which QFD could be implemented within the organization.
Part A. Quality function deployment
The new economic era where customers have much more choice than in the past, and where they are far more likely to exercise it, has made it an imperative for organizations to become much more customer focused. Many tools, techniques and philosophies have been developed to support this shift in focus from internal to external. Quality