Analyzing and Dealing with the Distortions in Customer Requirements Transmission Process of QFD

Abstract

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a quality management tool that transmits customer requirements into product design or innovation process to improve products' customer satisfaction. For the first time, this paper points out the distortions of customer requirements existing in the transmission process of QFD that are caused by the methods for calculating the importance degree of output information. The distortions lead to the designed or innovated product meeting less important customer requirements, without meeting more important customer requirements, so products' customer satisfactions are decreased. In order to avoid the distortions, a new method for calculating the importance degree of output information is proposed and an example is illustrated to demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the new method.