Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): Seminar on Quality Table of QFD

2013年3月23日星期六

Seminar on Quality Table of QFD

The seminar named "Quality Table of QFD" was organized by Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) and co-organized by Hong Kong Quality Fuction Deployment Association (HKQFDA) on 22 Mar 2013. There are the third seminar of QFD co-organized by HKSQ & HKQFDA. Quality Table, commonly known as House of Quality (HOQ), is the basic format for QFD operation. This seminar aimed to explain the logic and the way of constructing the quality table with the focus on how QFD assisted in strategy formulation.

Dr. Catherine Chan (President, HKQFDA) gave an introduction of QFD. QFD had been developed since 1960. It aimed to complete a quality system from design to product.

She introduced her teacher Prof. Yoji Akao and quoted his statement about the way QFD works.

Then she discussed the core elements of the Quality Table.

1. The left hand side table named "Demanded Quality Deployment Table" and used to extract, organize and work out the degree of importance for qualities that demanded by customers.

2. Then it convert demanded qualities into quality items (PUSH) and then organize into quality elements (See middle upper rectangular table in purple color). It called "Quality Element Deployment Table".

3. Determine degree of correlation between each pair of demanded quality and quality element in Quality Chart (See middle center table)

4. Analyze performance and formulate strategy in the Quality Planning Table (See right hand side table)

5. The triangle was Roof which used to review the degree of contradiction between quality elements.

6. The ranking of each quality elements were shown at the end of the table (In green color row under Quality Chart (no. 3)) used to identify the importance on each quality element.

The deployment of HOQs could be in different directions. It was not necessary to follow the sequence: Phase 1 - Conceive, Phase 2 - Develop, Phase 3 - Manufacture and Phase 4 - Deliver.

Catherine said there were two strategies for quality planning of QFD. They were Quality Level and Selling Tactics. If the planned quality level is 5 (high level), but the satisfaction with company's performance was 3 (ranked by customer). The calculated improvement rate should be 5/3 = 1.67. The allocated Sales Points would be either 1.5 or 1.2. (Why 1.5 or 1.2, Catherine quoted Prof. Akao that was his experience.) Overall weight of each demanded quality formula was shown as follow.

At the end, Catherine briefed an example of applying QFD on Understanding Patients' Satisfaction with Surgery. This research was done by Japanese student. The case illustrated that customers' needs are thoroughly studied through creating the demanded quality table. Quality elements are systematically derived from the demanded qualities.