Quantitatively Augmented QFD-HOQ

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a process to translate the Voice of the Customer (VOC) into the technical will of the enterprise. QFD is an integral step in the flowdown of customer requirements into the product system, subsystem(s), components and manufacturing processes. The House of Quality (HOQ) is a fundamental element of the QFD process, which provides a framework to relate customer attributes to engineering characteristics at the product architecture level. This paper presents the advantages and limitations of the symbols and weighting schemes used in constructing the relationship matrix in the classical House of Quality of the Quality Function Deployment process. The selection of the weighting scheme for function flowdown during the early design phase impacts the prioritization of engineering characteristics. A simple example using an nxn matrix is provided to illustrate the impact. A methodology is proposed to augment QFD-HOQ with principles used in vector matrix algebra and Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) to enable the selection of the right engineering characteristics.