Quality Digest

Hi GR

Garbage-in Garbage-out, so do your VOC work right.

QFD has evolved through the years. Many Six Sigma consultants and engineers lack the latest QFD know-how. They pigeon-holed QFD 15 years ago, as a huge House of Quality, and they think we have been standing still all these years.

The truth is that QFD has been streamlined, simplified and automated with software, web services and webtools for gathering VOC data and even rating QFD inputs on the web.

Smart companies have kept-up with QFD and regard it as a secret weapon for systems perspective porioritized decision-support, customer-focused agility, knowledgebase preservation, and the center piece of Design For Six Sigma.

QFD applies as a prioritization tool in many contexts and at any stage of product development. QFD applies to Strategic Planning, Task Deployment, Portfolio Management, Project Selection, Concept Selection, Decision-Support for Complex Acquisitions, Process Improvement, Prioritizing DOE, Prioritizing FMEAs, Prioritizing Resources and more prioritization.

There is no better way than QFD for prioritizing Six Sigma projects in accord with strategic goals.

IDEACore's support services handle the nuances of QFD, facilitate the QFD process, and run the VOC data acquisition and QFD software for you. Thousands of companies worldwide, IBM Consulting, American Supplier Institute, George Group, TBM Consulting Group and dozens more consultants & the US Army and every major aerospace/defense contractor have standardized on IDEACore for winning more government bids, and drafting better requirements documents, other uses of QFD or Design For Six Sigma, the new name for QFD, which has evolved to combine: QFD/VOC/KANO/AHP/DFMEA/PFMEA and TRIZ. See www.IDEACore.com for more.

One problem companies have had in the past is in making the House of Quality too large to handle. Thus, pre-work is necessary; the right input is key; ranking row item importance values properly; down-select before phase progressing. QFD Designer software links QFD charts for automatic changes ripple-through.

Good luck.

Dr. Thomas Lavigne
IDEACore Professional

RESPONSE: The concept of QFD to get voice of the customer (VOC) is good; however, I personally do not think that in most cases selling/training QFD as a stand-alone tool is the best thing to do.

One reason I have for taking this position is the exact problem that you are experiencing with implementation; your problem is not atypical. QFD work can be very time consuming, especially when there is a lot of drill-down to the details. Also, this type of VOC work is often viewed as a one-shot assessment.

I believe that the whole development process needs to be assessed for improvement opportunities, where VOC is one piece of that overall assessment (cycle time and "reworks/redesigns" need also to be considered).

VOC needs to be addressed not only at the developed product level but also at the enterprise level. This includes what products really should be undertaken as development projects. I have seen companies working at developing products where the a developed product should not have undertaken in the first place. If someone would have only looked at the "big picture" they would have seen that planned new product was not profitable relative to the company's overall product portfolio.

Hopefully this helps. Let me know if you would like to discuss further. It is difficult to describe all the details in this short message.

Forrest Breyfogle
forrest@smartersolutions.com
512-918-0280
www.smartersolutions.com

Dear Mr. Breyfogle,
Thanks for your quick response.

I want to follow with this discussion on certain points to obtain more clarity.

We don’t have an Organization wide “Sixsigma Initiative”. But, we (Quality) realize that QFD is a systematic and disciplined way to perform Product Development Process.

You mentioned in your response “ The concept of QFD to get voice of the customer (VOC) is good; however, I personally do not think that in most cases selling/training QFD as a stand-alone tool is the best thing to do.”

Is there anything besides QFD that you suggest that we can do with the VOC output?

Also you mentioned, “VOC needs to be addressed not only at the developed product level but also at the enterprise level.”

We have criteria for GO/NOGO decision at the Opportunity assessment level for any New Products development. At the enterprise level we have not much choice but to follow the Technology.

To your response, “If someone would have only looked at the "big picture" they would have seen that planned new product was not profitable relative to the company's overall product portfolio.”

One of our Opportunity assessment deliverable under technical assessment category is to present how the Planned Product fits in the Organization overall Technology Roadmap.

I guess with or without QFD, we have all the right things you mentioned. However, the QFD approach additionally ensures that we are translating the VOC into Product features, design controls, process controls and desired production output.

Your thoughts?
GR