Intro to the QFD Quality Function Deployment Method This method is used to ensure that the design team has a complete understanding of the problem before potential solutions are generated It will also serve to begin directing the team s thoughts to the generation of a large number of potential solutions to the problem Several steps in the method will provide further input in down stream decision making It will also develop the benchmarks by which the various design solutions may be measured You may feel that these steps slow down the design process but the time spent in generation of requirements specification and targets will be returned multi fold in terms of time spent to develop potential concepts and the quality of your eventual solution This document represents a general outline of the procedure For a more comprehensive discussion of this technique refer to the recommended text Ulman Identify the Customer s We wish to ensure that the customer s requirements drive the design process and not what the design engineer thinks the customer should want A design which does not properly address customer needs and wants may poorly received in the marketplace Generate list of your customer base Remember that is the vast majority of cases more than one customer will be identified Customers obviously include the end use consumer but can also include your own management manufacturing division sales staff and service department It may include governmental and regulatory bodies Almost anyone who contacts your product will have some level of customer interest I suggest that you record and sort your customer base within a spreadsheet We will additional information to this spreadsheet as we move through the process Determine the Customer s Requirements For each group within customer base try to determine customer requirements The idea is to create a list of all requirements that affect the design Be sure to consider the requirements of each of the customers you listed in the first step I suggest that you compile this list as a group to ensure that as many points of view as possible are considered You will often need to perform outside research to determine these requirements Market studies literature searches competition evaluation interviews and questionnaires are all means that can be employed Be as extensive as possible Requirements should be in the customer s words e g common terms For example non quantitative terms such as safe compact in size and easy to use are appropriate at this stage The list should represent positive ideas in other words it should state what the design should be not what it shouldn t be and not what is wrong with an existing design You should then add these to your spreadsheet so that it will be easier for you to associate other factors with each requirement and to sort your list See the end of this document for a list of types categories of customer requirements This list can be helpful when generating requirement for your project Determine Relative Importance of Requirements For each of the requirements generated assign a weight factor specifying whether you feel the requirement is something the product MUST have SHOULD have or would BE NICE if included The musts are requirements which must be met in the design no matter what Such requirements are often associated with standards codes legal requirements spatial concerns or company requirements for example existing facilities must be used Identify and mark these requirements within your list The remaining requirements should have or it would be nice if are wants The relative importance of these should be determined A common method for accomplishing this is to compare each want with each of the others A table can be constructed to help perform this comparison but the procedure is tedious Once the relative comparison is made they may be listed in order of importance It is common to use a 0 10 point scale where the MUST s are assigned a value of 10 By weighting the requirements you will be better able to weight your engineering requirements and eventually your concepts Record these weight factors in your spreadsheet Evaluate the competition existing solutions This is usually referred to as competitive benchmarking Existing designs are compared to the requirement list and a subjective evaluation of how well the design satisfies the requirement is made Existing designs that do not meet requirements indicate an area of opportunity Designs that meet requirements well should be studied for ideas Be careful however of patent infringement Translate Customer Requirements into Measureable Engineering Requirements For each requirement define the engineering metrics to be used For example a customer requirement of light weight may have metrics of LBS or Kilograms Doing this will help you in defining engineering specifications The next step is to transform each customer requirement into an engineering requirement This will involve the general of measurable engineering specifications The goal is to develop a set of engineering requirements design specifications that are measurable and may therefore be used to evaluate proposed design solutions Remember you will need to ensure that each engineering requirement is measurable If you are unable to find an engineering specification for a customer requirement it is an indication that the customer requirement is not well understood Try breaking the customer requirement down into smaller parts or revisit the process of determining requirement importance The creation of engineering requirements will provide us with a means of developing and evaluating design concepts for our product A critical step here is to find as many measurable engineering specifications for each customer requirement For example a requirement of easy to attach can be measured in 1 number of steps in attachment 2 time required to attach 3 number of parts required 4 number of tools required A possible solution is to break the requirement down into finer parts Record your engineering specifications in your spreadsheet Set Engineering Targets In this step you will step specific targets for the measurable engineering requirements These will be target values that will be used to evaluate your final design You should first determine how well the competition meets the engineering requirements The final step here is to define target values for your engineering specifications These target values will be used to evaluate how