Redesigned quality function deployment process to ensure customer satisfaction

Abstract

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) provides a systematic approach to product enhancement and has been widely implemented in modern enterprises. Despite its wide implementation, however, customer dissatisfaction continues to be an issue in QFD-designed products. This is mainly a result of the failure in determining correct Technical Importance Ratings (TIRs). To determine customer-oriented TIRs, we propose a method for reflecting the roof and adjusting the strength of the relationship between Customer Attributes (CA) and Engineering Characteristics (EC). The limiting probability of the Analytic Network Process (ANP) was used in the roof, and Extreme Pairwise Comparison with Median Rank (EPCMR) was used to determine the relationship strength, important ratings of EC, and CA. To illustrate, this paper includes a case study involving the results of a Six Sigma project in a Korean company.