New ISO 16355-1 for QFD

Since 2009, an international team of QFD experts convened by the QFD Institute has been writing the new ISO standard 16355 for QFD. The Part I is now on sale through various standards organizations listed below.

The purpose of the standard is to guide the global community of QFD practitioners, international businesses, and Quality and Design professionals in complying with the skills they need to achieve 21st century levels of innovation and quality in their new products.

To comply with this standard—more accurately, to be able to use the standard successfully, you must possess important QFD foundations.

Simply copying from the standard will not help achieve the desired success. You must know how to tailor QFD methods discussed in the standard, you must be able to distinguish which QFD tools and which deployments in what sequence are best for your project, not falling into copying something that turns out to be detrimental to your particular project.

To develop the sound QFD foundation to comply with ISO 16355 and develop successful product development skill-set, consider proper training. This will save you from making costly mistakes, wasting resources, and project failure.

The papers and links referenced in the standard and its Tool Matrix have been complied in a 1400+page eBook, which was complimentary to the March 2016 QFD Green Belt^® attendees. After that, this eBook is available from the QFD Institute. It contains case studies using the tools cited in the ISO 16355 as well as other resources. 

Standard organizations selling ISO 16355-1:2015 (Part I):

• ISO (International Standards Organization)
• ANSI (American National Standards Institute)
• ASQ (American Society for Quality)
• BSI (British Standards Institute)
• DIN (German Institute for Standardization)
• JSA (Japan Standards Association)
• NEN (Netherlands NEN)
• EESTI (Estonian Centre for Standardisation)
• SIS (Swedish Standards Institute)
• NO (Standards Norway)
• AFNOR (France)
• Normservis (Czech Republic)
• SCC (Standards Council of Canada)

Original post Feb. 27, 2016.  Updated March 25, 2016.

Bonehead specs are not customer needs

An automotive customer may demand these things from its vendor, for example:

• Performance level or specifications
• Features or functions
• Specific hardware or methods
• Complaint solutions or failure mode prevention
• Lower prices, etc.

In concept, the product performance, features, and methods outlined by the automaker may seem exciting. But sometimes satisfying these requirements still fails to satisfy the end customers (consumers).

Similarly, customers may express desires for such things as speed, engine power, braking performance, roomy interior, and so forth for a new car. Often these requirements show up in customer surveys, focus groups, various marketing research and even in consumer magazines.

The problem is that what you get from these stated requirements are specifications, not "customer needs." People often confuse the two. The distinction is critical for successful new product development.

"The stated customer wants are only a starting point in design. What they said they want is the best guesstimate of what they think the producer could deliver," says Glenn Mazur, executive director of the QFD Institute. "In New Product Development (NPD), the goal should be creating the future experience and value for the customers."

This is how to better-understand this:


The relationship between the customer needs and what customers tell you is similar to a fishbone diagram, with needs representing the "head" or a desired effect, and the specifications, functions, components, materials, etc. representing the "bones" or causal factors.

Customers are experts in "heads" and producers are experts in "bones." When customers give your bones instead of heads, you get "bonehead specs" ☺ where the customer mistakenly thinks their stated specs will meet their unstated needs. Then. when the product is delivered, it fails to fit their use, and they scream.

In the above automotive industry example,
Classical QFD using a 4-phase model and House of Quality matrix would lump all of the customer-stated requirements together and attempt to prioritize the results.  When you approach NPD that way, price and complaint issues dominate, and innovative product development gets inhibited.

Modern QFD, on the contrary, has specific tools for these:

• Identify what are product features and specs vs. what are customer needs
• Uncover 'unstated' customer needs
• Identify the unknown unknowns
• Determine what are 'true' customer needs (the foundation for highly competitive products)
• Set the needs priorities correctly

Modern QFD tools are strongest where you want to make a difference by widening the gap between merely meeting product specifications vs. satisfying the customer.

To truly build the "true customer needs" and innovation in your New Product Development, rather than the same old fixes of complaints and cost-pinching, we invite you to come learn the Modern QFD in the next public courses.

This advice also applies to those who have been doing Classical QFD for many years or learned the old QFD from books.