QFD methodology to develop a new health-conducive grain product

Abstract

The article describes using quality function deployment (QFD) methodology to develop a new grain product as healthy food. A questionnaire survey of consumer requirements for the new grain product was processed with the help of two techniques of quality management - an affinity diagram and a tree diagram - to generalise and structure consumer preferences. The elicited consumer requirements were further ranked according to the priorities, which made it possible to distinguish between imperative requirements and those that can be disregarded without significant effect on the resulting quality of the product. The methodology of quality function deployment was used to transform requirements of potential customers for the quality of grain crackers into technical characteristics of a new health-conducive grain product to develop through priority optimisation. The study has determined that development of a grain product as healthy food should guarantee prophylactic effectiveness of the new product on the basis of natural enriching additives, increased BAS content, and, certainly, longer shelf life and safety parameters of grain crackers.