INCORPORATING CONCEPTS OF BUSINESS PRIORITY INTO QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT

Abstract

While QFD has established itself as an important tool that relates the voice of the customer to a product's technical requirements, much remains unresolved in terms of coordination among the multi-department QFD team members. In implementing the technical requirements, conflicting resource constraints between departments translate into business risk. This paper presents two concepts — circle-of-control (COC) and effort-impact matrix (EI) — to help bridge the gap between the technical importance ranking and the business perspective attached to the technical requirements. COC is the concept of feasibility analysis with respect to implementing the requirements. EI is the concept of identifying an organisation's efficiency in implementing the requirements.