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Quality
Quality function deployment: function
more than a design tool deployment
Nadiye Ozlem Erdil and Omid M. Arani
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of New Haven,
West Haven, Connecticut, USA
Received 1 February 2018
Revised 1 June 2018
Abstract 14 August 2018
Accepted 25 September 2018
Purpose – This paper aims to investigate to what extent quality function deployment (QFD) can be used in
quality improvement rather than design activities.
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Design/methodology/approach – A framework was developed for implementation of QFD as a quality

improvement tool. A case study approach is used to test this framework, and quality issues were analyzed
using the framework in a ceramic tile manufacturing company.
Findings – The results showed considerable improvements in the critical quality characteristics identified
and sales rates, demonstrating the potential of QFD to be used in assessing and prioritizing areas of
improvement, and converting them into measurable process or product requirements.
Research limitations/implications – One case study was completed. More studies would be beneficial
to support current findings.
Practical implications – This framework provides structured approach and guidelines for practitioners
in adapting QFD for quality improvements in existing products or processes.
Originality/value – This study proposes a new framework to use QFD in quality improvement activities,
expanding its application areas. Moreover, the results of the literature study performed provide a valuable
collection of practical QFD implementation examples.
Keywords Case studies, Quality improvement, Quality function deployment, Complaints
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
Quality function deployment (QFD) is a methodology that helps translating customer needs
into design requirements to ensure that the output, whether this is a product or process,
meets these needs. Originated in the manufacturing industry, QFD also finds applications in
service industries. QFD was developed in Japan in the late 1960s as a design process aid to
incorporate customer voice into a product before it was manufactured. Its success came in
the form of reduction in start-up costs and development time and increased quality of a new
product (Evans and Lindsay, 2015). Its applications are mostly found in design-related
efforts, and many still limit QFD use to product design and development (Franceschini,
2002; Breyfogle I and Forrext, 2003; Cheng, 2003; National Academy of Engineering and
Institute of Medicine, 2005; Herzwurum and Schockert, 2006; Miguel, 2007; Mitra, 2016).
There are, however, exceptions to this; the American Society for Quality defines QFD as “a
structured process for planning the design of a new product or service or for redesigning an
existing one” (Tague, 2005); the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
describes QFD in the newly developed ISO 16355 standard as:
International Journal of Quality
[. . .] a method to assure customer or stakeholder satisfaction and value with new and existing and Service Sciences
products by designing in, from different levels and different perspectives, the requirements that © Emerald Publishing Limited
1756-669X
are most important to the customer or stakeholder (ISO, 2015). DOI 10.1108/IJQSS-02-2018-0008
 IJQSS This study investigates to what extent QFD can be applied in improvement efforts for
existing products. To address this, first, a literature review was performed which revealed
an increase in the number of studies using QFD in improvement activities in the recent
years. The majority of the QFD applications, however, are still in product design and
development. Furthermore, when used in improvement activities, QFD is used as if
gathering the voice of customer for a new design to generate specifications for re-design.
QFD is a powerful methodology for capturing and prioritizing customer needs and
linking them to technical requirements. These features enable QFD for use in assessing and
prioritizing areas of improvement, and converting them into measurable process or product
requirements. In this study, a framework was developed for using QFD as an improvement
tool. This framework was tested in a ceramic tile factory to demonstrate its application and
examine QFD’s effectiveness in this context.
The reminder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents an analysis of
current QFD literature. Section 3 provides a summary of conventional QFD implementation,
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and then describes the proposed methodology. Section 4 demonstrates the implementation
of the proposed approach through a case study and presents findings. Finally, Section 5
offers conclusions and future research directions.

2. Literature review
QFD is a methodology that takes the voice of customer, i.e. customer expectations, and
translates them into technical requirements to achieve the identified needs. Since its
introduction, it has been used in various industries. A review of literature containing
studies from 1992 to 2017 in over 55 journal titles shows a wide application scope. As seen in
Table I, QFD application areas extend from manufacturing to health care, and banking to
transportation.
The studies resulted from this literature search were classified based on three criteria. The
first classification grouped the studies according to their industry or setting. The second
criteria separated studies based on their context. If QFD methodology was implemented in a
manufacturing-related process, the entry was sorted under “Manufacturing” category. On the
other hand, if QFD was applied to a service-related process, the entry was listed under
“Service” category. The final classification was based on whether QFD was used in design
and development or improvement activities. For example, Sharma and Rawani (2007)
provides a case study involving syringe and needle manufacturing where the customer base
was in health care; thus, this study was classified under health-care industry/setting, and
manufacturing context. Similarly, Ho et al. (2011) applied their QFD model to an automobile
manufacturing company with a focus on their strategic sourcing. Therefore, this study was
listed under automotive industry and service context. Both studies were conducted in design
and development phase.
A closer look at Table I shows that most of the QFD implementation still takes place in
the design and development stage (Figure 1). One of the reasons for this lies in the way QFD
was introduced to the Western culture (Govers, 2001). QFD was introduced as a design tool
in Japan, and the continuous improvement (kaizen) philosophy embedded in Japanese
culture had an influence on its deployment. This philosophy was not inherited during the
adoption of QFD in the Western culture, and this limited QFD to be a “design tool” (Akao
and Mazur, 2003).
When the context is considered, the implementation of QFD portrays a slightly different
picture (Figure 2) in manufacturing and service industries. While QFD is used mainly in
design and development in manufacturing, the gap between different applications of QFD in
service is not as significant. Furthermore, more applications of QFD are observed in service
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Context Application
Industry/setting Source M S DD I

Automotive Gandhinathan et al., 2004; Wang et al., 2005; Chen and Ngai, X X
2008; Cherif et al., 2009; and Bhattacharyya and Chaudhuri,
2009; Fahma et al., 2015; Cordeiro et al., 2016
Miguel, 2005 X
Ho et al., 2011 X X
Al-Mashari et al., 2005
Banking Andronikidis et al., 2009 X X X
Gonzalez et al., 2004 X X
Communication Fehlmann, 2005 X
Hussain et al., 2011 X X
Construction Liu, 2011 X X
Armacost et al., 1994; Shin and Kim, 2000; Haron et al., 2012 X X
Education Mazur, 1996; Natarajan et al., 1999; Chan and Mazur, 2010; X X
Yousef and Mehrabian, 2016
Pitman et al., 1995; Okur et al., 2009; Cudney et al., 2012 X X
Electronics and Vinodh and Chintha, 2011b; Ju and Sohn, 2015 X X X
Robotics Chen and Wu, 2007 X X
Jia and Bai, 2011; Pasawang et al., 2015 X X
Energy Schilloa et al., 2017; Jahanzaib et al., 2016 X X
Environment and Batson and Moynihan, 2004; Wolniak and Sedek, 2009; Tseng X X
Safety and Torng, 2014
Vinodh and Chintha, 2011a X X
Yazdani et al., 2016 X
Facility Location Chadawada et al., 2015 X X
Food and Miguel, 2005 X
Sanitary Tontini, 2007; Kowalska et al., 2015 X X
Suryaningrat, 2016; Sayadi et al., 2017 X X
Health care Benitez et al., 2007; Rahman and Qureshi, 2008; Gremyr and X X
Raharjo, 2013; Dehe and Bamford, 2017
Sharma and Rawani, 2007; Sharma and Rawani, 2009 X X
Azadi and Farzipoor Saen, 2013 X
Lee et al., 2015; Buttigieg et al., 2016 X X
(continued)

setting
QFD implementation
deployment
Quality

areas industry/
Table I.
function
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IJQSS

Table I.
Context Application
Industry/setting Source M S DD I

Hospitality Enríquez et al., 2004 X

Paryani et al., 2010; Kuo et al., 2016 X X
Metal and Tottie and Lager, 1995; Han et al., 2001; Rahman and Baksh, X X
Machinery 2003; Ramasamy and Selladurai, 2004; Hanumaiah et al.,
2006; Kwong et al., 2011; Rattawut, 2015
Miguel, 2005 X
Alsyouf et al., 2011 X X
Packaging Chen and Ko, 2009; Miguel, 2013 X X
Tidwell and Sutterfield, 2012 X
Project Ahmed et al., 2003; LePrevost and Mazur, 2005; Lin and X X
Management and Pekkarinen, 2011
Planning Killen et al., 2005 X
Lo et al., 2016 X X
Sales and Summers, 2005; Yu et al., 2012; Dror, 2016; Murali et al., 2016 X X
Marketing
Social Gerst, 2004 X X
Administration Ocampo Jimenez and Baeza Serrato, 2016 X X
Vezzetti et al., 2016 X
Stationery Balthazard and Gargeya, 1995; Tsai et al., 2002 X X
Transportation Silva et al., 2004; Hadjina et al., 2015; Franceschini and X X
vehicle and Maisano, 2015
system Sireli et al., 2007; Khorshidi et al., 2016 X X
Okan et al., 2013 X X
Textile Bergquist and Abeysekera, 1996 X X
Camgöz-Akda.et al., 2016 X X

Notes: DD: Design and Development; I: Improvement; M: Manufacturing; S: Service

 industry. This is attributable to the increasing rate of adoption of QFD in non-manufacturing Quality
related areas in the recent years and more publications on QFD in service industry because it function
is fairly a new approach in this setting compared to manufacturing industry.
Figure 3 displays QFD studies through time in which a few sporadic applications of QFD
deployment
in improvement activities in the recent years is observed. Most of these studies were from
service industry, and in these studies, traditional QFD implementation was followed.

Figure 1.
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QFD applications –
design and
development vs
improvement

Figure 2.
QFD applications –
manufacturing vs
service industries

Figure 3.
QFD applications
through time
 IJQSS Mazur (2014) argues that QFD is a method that can be applied to new and existing products
or services, and that it is an effective method in generating customer satisfaction and value.
Nevertheless, in addition to the findings based on the analysis of studies listed in Table I, the
literature, furthermore, suggests that QFD is considered a method typically limited to
product design and development. In a study conducted by Miguel (2003), the top 500
companies in Brazil were surveyed about their use of QFD. One of the main reasons for
using QFD was identified as better-managed product development process. Increasing
customer satisfaction and improving communication in cross-functional teams were among
the other reasons selected. In a follow-up study, Miguel (2007) asked four large companies,
US and non-US based, (two automotive, one machinery and one plastics) to classify their
QFD projects in one of the following categories: new product platform, modification of an
existing product platform and little modification in existing products. The results showed
that, except machinery, all companies used QFD to develop a new product platform.
In another survey study investigating the adoption of continuous improvement
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strategies in Australian manufacturing firms, Terziovski and Sohal (2000) found that only
14.1 per cent of the 385 organizations used QFD in their improvement practices. Besides, it
was not clear in the article if QFD was used for existing products or services.
He et al. (2002) studied the integration of several quality tools, including QFD, failure
mode and effect analysis (FMEA), design of experiments (DOE) and statistical process
control (SPC), and proposed a quality integration model which provided a roadmap for the
use of aforementioned tools in design and manufacturing stages. The design stage referred
to activities in efforts to improve the quality of product in the design phase, and QFD,
FMEA, DOE and SPC were all placed in this stage. The manufacturing stage represented
activities that are used to continuously improve product quality during the manufacturing
process. The tools included in this section were SPC, DOE and some other analytical tools,
limiting QFD to design only.
ISO 16355 is an eight part standard on QFD, of which Part 1 was published in 2015, Parts
2, 4, 5 and 8 were published in 2017, and the remaining parts are under development (ISO
2015; ISO 2017a, ISO 2017b, ISO 2017c; ISO 2017d). ISO 16355 describes key QFD concepts
and provides a collection of methods and tools used in QFD implementation. Part 1
describes the QFD process, its purpose, users and tools. Generational improvements to
existing products are listed among the types of QFD projects in Part 1. Yet, the title of the
standard is “Application of statistical and related methods to new technology and product
development process,” which clearly inherits the traditional QFD approach focusing on only
new product and design. As the complete standard is not fully published, it is not considered
further within this study.
On the other hand, there are a few examples in the literature that promote QFD
use in improvement activities, but no extensive research exist that focus on establishing
QFD as a process and quality improvement tool. Zubek and Nibley (1994) used QFD
to align management requirements to critical business processes. The management
requirements included reducing costs, improving quality, standardizing engineering
functions and increase throughput which were mapped to configuration drawing, product
development structure, materials standards and design standards. Kaneko (2000) presented
a hypothetical proposal for using QFD to upgrade an existing car and suggested using
market verification as a starting point. Kapucuoglu-Ikiz and Ozdagoglu (2008) applied Blitz
QFD for process improvement through operational requirement analysis in a shipping
sector to determine design issues within the operation process. Blitz QFD is a method
created to analyze business operations and is a tailored traditional QFD replacing matrices
with many small focused tools. Cudney et al. (2012) used to generate recommendations for a
 professional society to improve their customer satisfaction and increase their member-base. Quality
But, while the focus in this application was on an existing service, QFD was implemented in function
an approach similar to its use in design and development, and a process re-design was done. deployment
QFD is typically used as a design tool. Yet, it could be used any time when customer
needs have to be identified to determine technical requirements for the purposes of
determining priorities and setting targets. QFD can be a powerful aid in improvement
activities especially when quality is of concern. Lack of framework and guidelines in
implementing QFD to enhance the quality of an existing product or process, however,
contributes to its low utilization in this context. An approach to use QFD as a quality
improvement tool is presented in the following sections.

3. Methodology
3.1 Quality function deployment process
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QFD implementation involves a set of matrices. In full implementation, there are four
matrices. The first one is called the House of Quality (HOQ). The term House of Quality is
often used to refer to QFD, but this initial matrix itself does not constitute the full
implementation. HOQ takes customer requirements and translates them into technical
(design) requirements. The second matrix turns technical requirements into part
specifications, which are then expressed in terms of process requirements in the third
matrix. Finally, quality specifications are defined in the last matrix (Figure 4).
HOQ is a critical element in the QFD process as it captures the voice of the customer as
well as it constructs a pathway for the direction of further efforts (Herzwurum and
Schockert, 2006). It is the most commonly used QFD component. The steps to develop HOQ
are described in the following text. Figure 5 shows the elements of HOQ. Each element is
numbered based on the sequence it is completed when generating HOQ.
Step 1) Identify customer needs and determine their degrees of importance. Customer
needs (requirements) are usually gathered from surveys, interviews, focus groups and other
similar methods. It is important to also gather the degree of importance of each need when
identifying customer needs. The customer needs can be defined in primary, secondary and
tertiary levels, with each level providing more details of the expressed need. Customer
needs, which are sometimes called “whats,” are turned into technical requirements, called
“hows,” in the next step.
Step 2) Identify technical requirements and determine interrelationships. After listing the
customer needs and their degrees of importance, the technical requirements have to be
established. Customer needs are expressed in the language of the customer such as a
computer user stating “I would like to see the colors vividly on my screen.” Technical
requirements are translation of these needs into design requirements expressed in
measurable attributes. In the screen example, the attributes may be color support, aspect

Figure 4.
Phases of QFD
process
 IJQSS ratio, pixel pitch, etc. Each technical requirement can fulfill one or more customer needs. The
team developing the QFD identifies the technical requirements.
The roof of HOQ is used to show the correlation between the technical requirements. It is
important to identify which technical requirements support or work against each other.
Table II shows the symbols and the corresponding correlation used to portray the
correlations in HOQ.
Also included in this step is the identification of the direction of improvement (maximize,
minimize or achieve a target value) for the technical requirements. This information is
stored in a row between the roof and the row listing technical requirements.
Step 3) Determine relationships between customer needs and technical requirements.
This is the center of HOQ. The customer needs that are listed on the left column are
connected to the technical requirements listed across the top by filling in the section called
the relationship matrix in Figure 5. Table III shows the symbols, and the corresponding
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Figure 5.
House of quality

Symbol Relation
Table II. l Strong positive correlation
Symbols used in the * Positive correlation
roof of house of Ó Negative correlation
quality Ó Strong negative correlation
 relations as they are used to identify the relationships between the customer and technical Quality
requirements. There needs to be at least one technical requirement that has a strong function
relationship with one of the customer requirements. Its lack may indicate that a particular
customer need may not be substantially addressed. Similarly, if a technical requirement is
deployment
not strongly connected to any of the customer needs, this requirement should not be
included in the QFD analysis.
Step 4) Perform competitive analysis. Competitive analysis evaluates the company in
study against its competitors. In this step, competitors’ products or services are reviewed in
satisfying the customers’ needs shown in the left most column of the matrix. 1 to 5 scale, five
being the best, can be used in evaluating each competitor product.
Step 5) Develop target values for technical requirements and determine technical
difficulties. Using the results of the competitive analysis and the degrees of importance for
customer needs, target values are selected for the technical requirements. The requirements
that correspond to the needs for which the competitors are doing better and for the ones that
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have higher degree of importance get more emphasis. Then, the technical difficulties are
identified based on how difficult it is to achieve the target values selected for each technical
requirement. The rankings are done typically using a five-point scale with 1 being the
easiest and 5 the most difficult.
In some QFD implementations, this step also includes competitor evaluation in terms of
technical requirements, and the results are recorded in a row included in the basement of the
matrix before the importance ratings.
Step 6) Calculate importance ratings. This section completes the basement of the house
where the importance ratings are recorded. The importance ratings are calculated to identify
which technical requirements will get the most attention in the following steps of the QFD
process. The importance ratings are the relative weights of each technical requirement
based on the weight of each item in terms of satisfying the customer needs. The weight of
each technical requirement is calculated using the following expression:
X
n
Wj ¼ di rij (1)
i¼1

where Wj is the weight of jth technical requirement, di is the degree of importance of ith
customer requirement; and rij is the relationship coefficient between the ith customer
requirement and the jth technical requirement, which can be extracted from the “relationship
matrix” in the HOQ chart. The relative weights are then determined using the following
equation
X
m
Zj ¼ W j = Wk (2)
k¼1

Symbol Relationship Score

l Strong relationship 9 Table III.

¢ Medium relationship 3 Symbols used in the
p Weak relationship 1 relationship matrix
 IJQSS where Zj is the relative weight (importance rating) of the jth technical requirement. Technical
requirements with higher importance ratings and poor in performance compared to
competitor products are moved to the second phase where another matrix is generated to
identify the part characteristics using the same process described above. The technical
requirements in this case are entered in the left column of the new matrix. This process
continues until the last matrix in the QFD implementation is completed.

3.2 QFD implementation - traditional approach

QFD is most commonly applied in the early phases of the design to translate the voice of
customer into design requirements. Therefore, HOQ, which was described in the previous
section, is the most utilized component of QFD. The complete QFD process follows a
waterfall diagram as shown in Figure 6. Each matrix in Figure 4 helps develop input for the
next step in sequence. HOQ generates design requirements. The design requirements are
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translated into part characteristics, which are then used to determine manufacturing
processes best suitable for producing the new product. In the last stage, production
requirements, i.e. quality control plans to ensure that the product meets manufacturing
requirements, are identified. Plans include statistical process control, preventative
maintenance, operator instructions and so on. The adoption of QFD in service industries
involves interpreting these steps in terms of service elements. Apart from that, the process
follows the same waterfall flow. QFD is an extremely useful methodology if done correctly.
Cross-functional teams is one of the key elements. Furthermore, establishing clear objectives
and scope of using QFD, obtaining management commitment and gathering quality data
are other factors for effective implementation of QFD.

3.3 Method and design: quality function deployment as an improvement tool

The traditional approach restricts QFD application to design and development. QFD,
nonetheless, has potential to be used in improving existing products or services. Figure 7
shows our proposed approach in which QFD is used to enhance the quality of or to reduce
quality problems in existing products. In the former, the results of QFD lead to preventive

Figure 6.
Process flow in
traditional QFD
implementation

Figure 7.
Process flow for
QFD as an
improvement tool
 actions, while the latter generates corrective actions. In this proposed approach, HOQ would Quality
be the primarily used component as in the traditional QFD implementation. But in this HOQ, function
customer requirements represent areas of improvements. These areas are linked to technical
requirements that later guide the development of actions. Depending on the complexity of
deployment
the technical characteristics, subsequent matrices can be developed as in the traditional
approach to define a particular improvement activity.
Integrating customer complaints in the QFD model helps the organization to investigate
the root cause of customer dissatisfaction (Warwick Manufacturing Group, 2007). In the
proposed framework, the customer complaint history is used as a main source for customer
need identification in addition to the traditional QFD data collection tools. The types and
frequency of complaints provide data on customer needs and their degrees of importance as
shown in Figure 8.
The identification of technical requirements is then done similar to the traditional
approach. The third stage is to translate technical requirements into actions that will
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generate improvement plans. Preventive or corrective actions are evaluated to select

feasible, effective actions that cover one or more most important customer requirements.
QFD is promoted as a tool focusing on maximizing positive quality by incorporating
customer needs into product design from the conceptual phase in contrast to traditional
quality systems that aim to minimize negative quality from the product (Mazur, 1993).
Nevertheless, quality problems do occur after the product or process is brought to life. This
suggested approach helps to expand the role of QFD and places it in the quality
improvement models. One of the most important goals of the traditional QFD is to get the
design correct the first time by incorporating customer voice from the start. QFD has been
successful in achieving this goal which is the reason it is widely used, despite the great
efforts needed for its implementation. The use of QFD as an improvement tool can provide
similar benefits. The QFD will help the improvement team to identify issues that need the
most attention as well as to determine the technical aspects of the product or process that
will produce the greatest improvements.

4. Case study
4.1 Methodology
A case study was used to apply the proposed QFD framework to demonstrate its
implementation and to assess its effectiveness as an improvement tool as described above.
The study was conducted in a ceramic tile-manufacturing factory, and the issues with the
quality of tiles were analyzed. The company was receiving large number of customer
complaints. Furthermore, the marketing reports were reflecting flat annual sales despite
increasing sales forecast. To eliminate the quality issues, the proposed QFD implementation
explained in section 3.2 was followed and the technical requirements were identified and
linked to corrective actions.
Customer requirements were extracted from two sources, customer complaint history
and interviews. Interviews were conducted with wholesalers that had close relations with
customers and knew about their needs. The results of these interviews were treated as voice

Figure 8.
Gathering voice of
customer
 IJQSS of customer who had not filed a complaint but in fact had some dissatisfaction about the
product. These results were combined with the reported customer complaints to generate
input to QFD.
In this proposed approach, it is possible to describe customer requirements in
technical terms rather than in the language of the customer because these requirements
are described by the QFD team, and their importance or their lack of are determined by
customer complaint history data and the interviews. Furthermore, as the product or the
process already exists, translating customer verbatim into technical requirements is
straightforward.
To complete HOQ, the process detailed in Section 3.1 was followed. First, the information
gathered from customer complaints data was transferred to the left hand column of the HOQ
matrix. Technical requirements related to each customer requirement (customer complaint
type in this case) were identified by the QFD team. The relationships between the technical
requirements and the customer requirements, information needed to complete Steps 2 and 3,
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were generated during the QFD team meetings. Step 4, competitive analysis was performed
with two competitor products which were tested in the laboratory against each requirement.
Finally, the bottom of HOQ was completed. The estimates for the competitors’ products
were obtained from the laboratory tests. The degree of difficulty and the relationship
between the technical requirements were established based on expert knowledge,
consultants’ recommendations and available information about competitors’ experiences.

4.2 Application
Customer requirements. First, the QFD implementation team generated a list of issues
based on expert knowledge from production, service and marketing. These issues, called
complaint types, were classified into two categories: product and service (Table IV). The
product issues were related to the appearance of the tiles and the tile structure and were
identified as color variation, surface finish, packaging, straightness, dimension variation
and resistance. The service items were mainly sales related and were defined as price, after-
service and item availability.
Interviews. In total, 80 wholesalers were surveyed to gather information on the types of
complaints that were identified by the QFD team. The wholesalers were asked to rate how
frequently each complaint type occurred based on their experiences with the customers. The
rating was on a three-point scale, with 3 being frequently, 2 being occasionally and 1 being
rarely. The survey results and the calculated scores for each category are shown in Table V.
The frequency (F) is the weighted mean and is calculated using equation (3) where R

Category Issues Attribute

Product Appearance Color variation

Shiny-surface
Durable packaging
Structure Straightness
Accurate dimension
Table IV. High resistance
List of issues Service Cost Price
generated by the Sales After sales services
QFD team Inventory availability
 represents the quantitative value of the rank assigned and N represents the frequency of ith Quality
rank. function
P2 deployment
R i Ni
F ¼ Pi¼0
2
(3)
i¼0 Ni

Customer complaint history. The complaints that were filed in the previous year were
analyzed by first identifying the types of complaints, and then the number of complaints for
each type. There were total 54 complaints. About 60 per cent of these cases had a nature of
complaint that matched with a type of complaint identified by the QFD team. The remaining
were single cases related to other issues, which were grouped under Other and were
excluded from the rest of the QFD analysis. Table VI shows the frequency summaries.
The degree of importance for each complaint category was calculated by combining the
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data from the two sources described above. The customer complaints data had a weight of 5,
as it provided a direct input from the customer while the data from the wholesaler
interviews were assigned a weight of 2. Table VII shows the list of customer requirements
along with their degrees of importance. The cumulative rank is calculated by factoring in
the weights of each input data, and the scaled rating is a placement of the cumulative rank
on a 1 to 9 scale.
Completion of quality function deployment. The information in Table VII generated the
input for the QFD and was entered into the left hand column of the HOQ matrix. The rest of
HOQ was completed as detailed in Section 4.1 The final HOQ chart is shown in Figure 9. One

Occurrence (Weight)
Item # Complaint type Frequently (2) Occasionally (1) Rarely (0) Frequency (F)

1 Color variation 54 21 5 43
2 Price 43 26 11 37
3 Accurate dimension 40 31 9 37
4 Inventory availability 37 31 12 35
5 Straightness 28 23 29 26
6 Shiny-surface 26 26 28 26 Table V.
7 High resistance 22 31 27 25 Wholesaler
8 Durable packaging 10 34 36 18 evaluation of
9 After sales services 0 36 44 12 complaints

Item # Complaint type Frequency

1 Color variation 5
3 Accurate dimension 4
4 Inventory availability 6
5 Straightness 7 Table VI.
7 High resistance 6 Customer complaints
9 After sales services 4 prior to QFD
10 Other 22 implementation
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IJQSS

Customer

importance
Table VII.

their degrees of
requirements and
Interviews (Weight = 2) Complaint history (Weight = 5) Degree of importance
Item # Customer requirement Frequency Relative rank Frequency Relative rank Cumulative rank (1-9) Scale

1 Color variation 43 0.17 5 0.16 0.16 7.7

2 Price 37 0.14 0 0.00 0.04 2.0
3 Accurate dimension 37 0.14 4 0.13 0.13 6.3
4 Inventory availability 35 0.13 6 0.19 0.17 8.4
5 Straightness 26 0.10 7 0.22 0.19 9.0
6 Shiny-surface 26 0.10 0 0.00 0.03 1.4
7 High resistance 25 0.10 6 0.19 0.16 7.8
8 Durable packaging 18 0.07 0 0.00 0.02 1.0
9 After sales services 12 0.05 4 0.13 0.10 5.0
Total 260 32
 of the customer requirements, price, did not show a strong relationship with any of the Quality
technical requirements; however, the QFD team decided that the existing two relationships, function
medium and weak, were sufficient to address this item. Similarly, the technical requirement
firing domain was not strongly connected to any of the identified needs, but the team chose
deployment
to include it in the analysis due to its medium and weak relationships with multiple
customer requirements.

4.3 Findings and discussions.

Online service, kiln isolation and press pressure were the technical requirements with the
highest relative importance ratings in the completed HOQ. This meant focusing on these
requirements would generate greater impacts in terms of addressing the items the
customers complained about the most. The actions were identified as providing online
services which the company did not have at the time, improving kiln isolation and
increasing the press pressure. Kiln isolation improves the composition of the kiln
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atmosphere which in turn would lead to reduction in color variation. Kiln isolation may also
improve deviation observed from the center of the tile. This deviation causes issues with tile
straightness. Increased press pressure increases bulk density of tile body, which generates
stronger tiles and tiles that are more heat-resistant. These changes also help improving non-
linearity and deviation issues. Online services including sales, warranty claims and
inventory inquires target to improve tracking of purchase transactions hence to improve
after sales related issues.
The implementation took two months. After a six-month control period internal and
external analyses were performed to measure the effectiveness of the actions taken.
Figure 10 shows the before and after comparison of the company’s product performance on
each customer complaint type. The after-implementation ratings were obtained by
performing competitive comparison as explained in the competitive comparison section
below, and the before-implementation ratings were acquired from the product evaluation in
the original HOQ.
In HOQ analysis, after sales services and inventory availability were strongly related to
online services. As Figure 10 shows, these two issues were reduced after the introduction of
online services. Similarly, straightness, which was strongly linked to kiln isolation, and
high-resistance, which was strongly linked to the press pressure, were improved. The two
customer requirements, color variation and accurate dimension were also improved in the
process. The reason was the moderate relationship between these customer requirements
and the two technical requirements selected for improvement actions.
The sales data also showed improvements. Figure 11 shows the tiles sold in meter
squares for the past six years. Following the QFD implementation, which occurred at the
end of year 4 and in early year 5, the company recorded increasing sales trend. While it is
possible that other factors might have had an impact on sales, as there were no significant
changes in the market during this period, the improvement recorded was largely attributed
to the project that used QFD.
Competitive comparison. The company and competitors’ products were tested against
the customer requirements one more time after the implementation of the improvement
actions. The data for the product related items were obtained from the laboratory tests, and
the service-related items were based on available market information. The right side of HOQ
with before and after data in Figure 12 shows that the improvements had external impacts
too.
Implications. In the case study described above, the customer requirements were
obtained through the interviews and filed customer complains. These requirements
 IJQSS
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Figure 9.
House of quality
linking customer
complaints to
technical
requirements

constituted input to QFD to generate technical requirements, which were then used to guide
improvement actions to address customer issues and to improve product quality. The
results were significant, which support the purpose of this study that QFD implementation
can be expanded, and that QFD can be used as an improvement tool for an existing product,
service or process. While this study presents an example from manufacturing, the proposed
framework is not specific to an industry, but is intended to be applicable to the wide
spectrum of projects where QFD can be applied. Similar to studies in the literature this study
uses HOQ as an essential tool. HOQ provides a structured approach in prioritizing customer
needs, and connecting them to technical requirements. In the proposed framework, this
 Quality
function
deployment

Figure 10.
Tile performances –
before and after
comparison
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Figure 11.
Total meter square
tiles sales data

Figure 12.
Before and after
competitive
assessment
 IJQSS connection helps to generate focused improvement efforts which can be applied in all types
of organizations and industries.
Furthermore, the framework presented can be tailored based on available data or the
need. This study uses interviews and customer complaints as the main source for voice of
customer. Information from tools that provide customer or process voice such as warranty
returns, gemba visits, kano model and value stream maps, can be integrated into the
framework. Each source would receive a weight assignment and would be included in the
analysis to generate an input to HOQ.

5. Conclusion
In this paper, a framework was proposed to adopt QFD as a quality improvement tool. An
extensive literature search showed that QFD implementation still largely takes place in
design and development, especially in manufacturing industry. Only a small fraction uses
QFD to improve the quality of an existing product and in those cases traditional QFD
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implementation is followed. The proposed approach uses QFD methodology to identify and
prioritize areas of improvement. In doing so, customer complaints history is used in addition
to the traditional voice of customer tools such as surveys, focus groups and interviews. HOQ
links areas of improvements to technical requirements. Revealing these connections helps
the improvement team to identify and prioritize technical characteristics that will generate
the greatest improvement impacts. The results of QFD lead to preventive actions or
corrective actions depending on whether the improvement efforts were to address quality
issues or to enhance a product or process. The proposed framework was tested with a case
study and the results showed considerable improvements in areas with customer
complaints and sales volumes, demonstrating the potential of QFD in assessing and
prioritizing areas of improvement, and converting them into measurable process or product
requirements. Although its implementation would require more effort compared to other
improvement tools, QFD shows a bigger picture of the problem while providing more
targeted information to achieve greater impacts.
This study proposed a framework which expands QFD application areas. This
framework provides guidance for practitioners in adapting QFD for quality improvements
in existing products or processes. Furthermore, the literature review performed to identify
the research gap provides a valuable collection of practical QFD implementation examples.
The case study presented focuses on the application of QFD in manufacturing. Future work
includes testing the framework with more case studies from manufacturing and service
industries to support current findings and to extend application areas to service industry.
For researchers, the framework provides a template for placement of QFD in improvement
models. This template can be tailored to support the popular quality and process
improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma, Lean and PDCA, which will help QFD to be
established as an important quality and process improvement tool.

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Corresponding author
Nadiye Ozlem Erdil can be contacted at: [email protected]

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