A versatile manual that can be used to stimulate product innovation, benchmarking analysis, and engineering design, this book goes beyond theory to provide relevant advanced methods and techniques that readers can apply in their work for both short- and long-term results. The author links Quality Function Deployment (QFD) with other quality design techniques and discusses processes for improving its effectiveness. He also highlights methods for selecting a product's technical features. Real implementation case studies and numerous examples illustrate the concepts, including the Qualitometro method for designing and measuring quality in the service sector.

This book not only explains QFD fundamentals clearly and concisely, it takes you well beyond the basics to provide the advanced techniques, specific information, and concrete examples you need to implement QFD successfully and derive its full benefits.

This book introduces into the practical application of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) beyond the famous House of Quality Matrix by presenting a fully developed example of a clear and comprehensive QFD framework. The QFD workflow is described step by step, encompassing strategic planning, customer surveys, product and service characteristics, mechanisms, parts and cost deployment, technologies, process phases and faults analysis. The model, as presented with practical suggestions, can be used in firms with low resources and/or need for speed. In addition, a chapter is dedicated to the most common “fuzzy” algorithms, explained for professionals and the book closes by describing in detail some QFD case studies. This book will be of interest to all who wish to use QFD to respond to and satisfy customer requirements effectively.

This book focuses on the collection, interpretation, and analysis of the voice of the customers (VOC) and serves as an excellent reference or textbook for learning how to apply QFD. Following this unique approach for capturing the VOC will ensure your product/service meets their needs. Included is a discussion of recent advances in QFD methodology, methods for strategically analyzing and selecting benchmarks, and examples through case studies. Contents: Introduction to Quality Function Deployment, Decision Making Using the House of Quality, Variability Analysis in QFD, QFD for Service Quality Analysis, The Implementation of QFD-based Linguistic Data, Benchmarking in QFD for Quality Improvement

Customer Integration Attaining higher levels of customer delight, increasing the speed and efficiency in the product development process, and increasing profits are goals many managers are struggling to achieve. Customer Integrated Decision Making, or CIDM, is a process that will show managers how to reach these goals by integrating the customer into the decision-making process and incorporating the customer's wants and needs into the design of new products and services. Customer Integration: The Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Leader's Guide for Decision Making focuses on the complete CIDM/QFD process. The book details the reasons for using CIDM market identification techniques, and QFD idea generation methodologies, as well as some basic and advanced customer "choice" prediction approaches. This practical, structured, and replicable process will provide a company of any size with the tools to assure its teams' success as they move to become linked to the customer. Customer Integration opens with a comprehensive overview for executives, followed by a detailed discussion of how CIDM/QFD can increase profits for businesses in a variety of industries. The executive overview reviews the issues confronting companies today and gives reasons why executives will need to be linked to customers to compete. The second part of the book lays out some of the foundation knowledge that middle managers will need to have in order to commit to supporting individuals and teams and to complete CIDM/QFD projects. Part II also offers practical discussions on the critical role of leadership and the challenges of implementation. The third part of the book provides a step-by-step explanation of the process, along with a complete review of the necessary concepts and tools to make a CIDM/QFD project happen. Customer Integration is designed for the whole company. It provides the information executives and managers need to undertake a Customer Integrated Decision-Making project and the knowledge that team members need to assure success in their project. Advance praise for Customer Integration "Customer Integration is written for the entire management team, from the executive to the project team members, challenging all not only to decide to use CIDM/QFD, but to achieve maximum value from the process. This is a book for those who believe delighting customers is a state of the art." --Michael E. Holtzleiter Manager-Europe, Senco Fastening Systems "The CIDM concepts in this book go beyond the QFD matrix analysis to show how to introduce the process into a company and how to lead a multifunctional team through the process. These concepts are helping us balance the voice of the customer in our product development process. After just one project, it is adding clarity and objectivity to our decisions by highlighting the trade-offs that must be made between customer wants, competitive pressures, and our company's capabilities." --Ronald A. Weeks Corporate Planning Director, Cincom Systems, Inc. "Having completed a CIDM project, I found Customer Integration to be a comprehensive documentation of this incredible process. This very replicable methodology truly allows companies to get at the 'real' customer requirements. The way the book is divided into sections for the executive, project and middle manager, and team members provides a clear perspective on 'hands on' for each." --Steve Nelson Manager-Emerging Markets, Senco Fastening Systems "If you are looking for structured processes that provide you with a better understanding of your customers, an understanding about what they mean by value, that promotes 'leveling' of customer knowledge among the enterprise, that assures 'true' teaming and reduces the time to bring innovations into the marketplace, then Customer Integration is the book that you have been looking for." --John Edholm Vice President-Sales & Marketing, Pierce and Stevens

BACKGROUND There is an increasing awareness that 'time to market' is the key competitive issue in the manufacturing industry today. The global markets are demanding products that are well designed, are of high quality and are at low prices with ever decreasing lead times. Hence manufacturers are forced to utilize the best methods of technology with efficient control and management accompanied by suitably enabling organizational structures. Concurrent engineering (CE) is widely seen to be the methodology that can help satisfy these strenuous demands and keep the profitability and viability of product developers, manufacturers and suppliers high. There have been many reported successes of CE in practice. Rover were able to launch Land Rover Discovery in 18 months as compared with 48-63 months for similar products in Europe. Because of its early introduction to the market it became the best selling product in its class. AT&T report part counts down to one ninth of their previous levels and quality one hundred times (in surface defects) for VLSI (very improvements of large scale integration) circuits as a result of using the CE approach. WHO SHOULD READ THIS TEXT? This book will aim to provide a sound basis for the very diverse subject known as concurrent engineering. Concurrent engineering is recognized by an increasingly large proportion of the manufacturing industry as a necessity in order to compete in today's markets. This recognition has created the demand for information, awareness and training in good concurrent engineering practice.

Quality issues are occupying an increasingly prominent position in today's global business market, with firms seeking to compete on an international level on both price and quality. Consumers are demanding higher quality standards from manufacturers and service providers, while virtually all industrialized nations have instituted quality programs to help indigenous corporations. A proliferation in nation-wide and regional quality awards such as the Baldridge award and certification to ISO 9000 series are making corporations world-wide quality-conscious and eager to implement programs of continuous improvement. To achieve competitiveness, quality practice is a necessity and this book offers an exposition of how quality can be attained. The Handbook of Total Quality Management: Explores in separate chapters new topics such as re-engineering, concurrent engineering, ISO standards, QFD, the Internet, the environment, advanced manufacturing technology and benchmarking Discusses the views of leading quality practitioners such as Derning, Juran, Ishikawa, Crosby and Taguchi throughout the book Considers important strategies for quality improvement, including initiation and performance evaluation through auditing, re-engineering, and process and design innovations. With contributions from 47 authors in 13 different countries, the Handbook of Total Quality Management is invaluable as a reference guide for anyone involved with quality management and deployment, including consultants, practitioners and engineers in the professional sector, and students and lecturers of information systems, management and industrial engineering.