Using Quality Function Deployment to Write an ISO Standard for QFD*

ABSTRACT

Quality function deployment (QFD) is methodology designed to improve customer satisfaction by increasing the quality of new products and services. Unlike traditional quality methods that focus on solving existing, known problems to achieve “zero defect,” QFD is driven by the voice of the customer to explore high-priority spoken and unspoken needs that must be met for a new product or service to be accepted. To achieve this first-time quality, developers must know what problems the customer has, how important those problems are to helping the customer do their job better, and what level of improvement is necessary for the customer to accept it in place of their current practice. Thus, QFD is highly dependent on the customer and their business, the industry of the product or service, and what competitive alternatives the customer has access to. This article will discuss how these same methods are used to write the QFD standard itself.

KEYWORDS:

• ISO standards
• quality function deployment (QFD)
• voice of the customer (VOC)

Notes

Editor's Note: In this issue we have invited Glenn Mazur, expert in quality function deployment (QFD), to present his views and experience on using QFD for standards development, particularly on how this has been used in new development work for applying QFD itself. This is particularly significant in standards development in general because in addition to technical substance, a high-quality standards development process requires team identification, customer identification, customer requirements, consensus building, balloting, and compromise.

*Edited by Stephen N. Luko, Hamilton Sundstrand Corporation, Windsor Lock, Connecticut.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Glenn H. Mazur

Glenn H. Mazur, B.A., M.B.A., and QFD Red Belt®, has been active in QFD since its inception in North America and has worked extensively with the founders of QFD on their teaching and consulting visits from Japan. He is a leader in the application of QFD to service industries and consumer products, conducts advanced QFD research, and is the conference chair for the annual North American Symposium on Quality Function Deployment. Glenn is the Executive Director of the QFD Institute and International Council for QFD, adjunct lecturer on TQM at the University of Michigan College of Engineering (ret.), President of Japan Business Consultants Ltd., and a senior member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and the Japanese Society for Quality Control (JSQC). He is a certified QFD Red Belt® (highest level), one of two in North America. He is a certified QFD-Architekt #A21907 by QFD Institut Deutschland. He is convenor of the ISO Technical Committee 69 Subcommittee 8 Working Group 2 to write an international standard for QFD. He is an academician of the International Academy for Quality. He is the honorary president of the Hong Kong QFD Association.