The Effectiveness of the Quality Function Deployment in Managing Manufacturing and Transactional Processes

Abstract

The goal of Quality Engineering is to design quality into every product, service and manufacturing process. In particular a methodology is claimed to be very important for Quality design and management: Quality Function Deployment (QFD). QFD is a structured methodology and mathematical tool used to identify and quantify customer requirements and translate them into key critical parameters of systems and processes. The aim of the paper is to show how a quality management approach can support the increase of the process capability in a global vision of every business. QFD represents one of the most successful tools used in industrial management. By using actual and real cases, the paper shows the effectiveness of the QFD in improving both the management of a process and its capability. Four examples are presented. They take into account different environments: pharmaceutical, mechanical, healthcare and transportation markets. The first case study is deployed in a pharmaceutical company to satisfy the new customer requirements for the introduction of a nasal spray product on the Japanese market. The second example is applied to the automotive market for the production of air-cooling devices for deluxe vehicles. Finally, the other two cases show the implementation of the QFD tool in transactional processes, such as Cargo Center activities and healthcare services.