Application of the quality function deployment approach to the optimization of an enterprise resource planning software

Abstract

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software are essential tools for those business activities that want to be competitive on the market: their use allows to manage all the economic and organizational aspects of a company, optimizing the use of resources. For this reason, the structure and functions of this software must be able to manage countless heterogeneous business aspects and, often, characteristic for each individual company. Therefore, during the design and the development phases it is necessary to analyze and understand the interests and needs of the end users, combining them with technical and market aspects. An approach capable of combining these aspects is the House of Quality (HoQ), a tool of Quality Function Deployment. It, applicable to new products or to the optimization of existing ones, allows to effectively identify and order the technical specifications and functions of the software (HOWs) by evaluating the most important requests of user customers (WHATs). This study describes the application of HoQ to the optimization of an ERP software, identifying the main critical elements in the existing configuration and co-designing a new version through the direct involvement of users, evaluating the importance of their needs.