Showing posts with label HoQ matrix. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HoQ matrix. Show all posts

11 March 2020

What is Maximum Value Table?


Maximum Value Table (MVT) is one of the powerful tools in Modern QFD that is explained in the ISO 16355 standard. Below, let us share an excerpt from a recent QFDI newsletter, describing the purpose and role of the MVT and why it is important to master this tool before attempting a House of Quality matrix.
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Maximum Value Table lets you deploy the same focused of voice of customer analysis as the House of Quality (HoQ) matrix does, but with greater speed, efficiency, and focus. It is an invaluable tool when budget, manpower and development time are limited.

Its purpose is to deploy only the highest priority Customer Needs into a solution design, build, and commercialization such that every necessary action to satisfy those needs is taken by each and every relevant organization department in a timely and quality way. No step must be overlooked. This is how customer satisfaction with the new product is assured.

The MVT is not constructed in one meeting, but it is populated as the design progresses, with each department adding its information in reflection of prior entries and in anticipation of later entries. It creates a traceable record that illustrates how every necessary action to achieve customer satisfaction has been sufficiently performed.

It is important to appreciate that only with a true multi-functional team can all of the MVT columns get addressed.  This forces cross-functional collaboration toward a common business goal. This is exactly how it assures the final shipped product will satisfy the highest priority customer needs.

The MVT achieves its purpose of providing maximum value to the customer by assuring their highest priority problems, opportunities, and image concerns are resolved by the new product or service. The MVT provides maximum value to the organization by aligning all critical resources (time, people, money, information) to develop and commercialize the new product or service. Value is achieved only when the customer chooses our new product or service and puts it into service to satisfy their needs.

Which should we use, MVT or HoQ?

The columns of the MVT are indicators of what, if any, QFD matrices from the Comprehensive QFD toolset described in the eight parts of ISO 16355 may be useful for more detailed analysis.

A QFD matrix is an effect-to-cause relationship matrix between two data sets. This means that any two MVT columns that share a relationship could be juxtaposed into a matrix that would indicate the strength of the relationship and transfer the weights of the rows into weights for the columns.

The House of Quality (HoQ) is the most well-known among the 30+ matrices in Comprehensive QFD. The HoQ juxtaposes a large set of Customer Needs against a large set of Functional Requirements. The top priority items in the HoQ, that is, Customer Needs and Functional Requirements, are commonly found at the start of the MVT.

As such, the MVT can often replace the HoQ when resources are constrained. Alternatively, the MTV can be used to model which Comprehensive QFD matrices are needed. There is no penalty to doing the MVT first, because by definition, the highest priority information derived from QFD matrices should already be in the columns of the MVT. A well executed MTV is more valuable than a poorly or partially deployed HoQ matrix.

Where can I learn the Maximum Value Table (MVT)?

The Maximum Value Table (MVT) is taught at the QFD Green Belt® training.

The QFD Institute offers public QFD Green Belt® courses several times a year. The same workshop is also available at your business locations. Please inquire by email.

Most attendees are able to begin using this fabulous tool in their work, once they get with it through hands-on practices in the class.


Notes:

Transferring the Customer Need weights into Functional Requirement weights in the HoQ is conventionally done using Independent Distribution calculations (in Excel this function is called SumProduct). These calculations do not support the use of ordinal scale numbers, which was inherited from the 1960-70s Japanese QFD in the pre-computer era. In the late 1980s, the QFD math was upgraded to more precise ratio scale numbers based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and other best practices from Multicriteria Decision Making theory. This upgrade is now taught in the QFD Green Belt® training (including Excel worksheets) and guidance is detailed in the ISO 16355-5:2017 standard.





17 November 2014

Upcoming Public QFD Courses
— Learn today's best methods and tools

All events listed here will be held at Charleston Marriott in Charleston, South Carolina USA. The 1-day Symposium on December 5, 2014 is complimentary to the course attendees.

Registration Page.
For questions, please contact the QFD Institute.
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QFD Green Belt® Certificate Course
December 3–4,  2014  (Wed & Thurs)

    QFD Green Belt® Certificate Course
  • Your chance to learn Modern Blitz QFD®.  
  • Learn how to do QFD analysis without the outdated 4-house matrices, without the resource-consuming House of Quality matrix.
  • Learn how to do a Gemba and VOC analysis, correctly identify and prioritize customer needs, transform them into design specifications of customer-value and innovative solutions, deploy them throughout your new product/service development process — with agility and efficiency essential to today's lean environment. 
  • Templates included (modern QFD, AHP, modern House of Quality, Maximum Value Table, and more).
  • No Prerequisites.

QFD Black Belt® Certificate Course
December 8–12,  2014  (Monday - Friday)

    QFD Black Belt® Certificate Course
  • Advanced QFD training for DFLS/DFSS black belts and master black belts, trainers, facilitators, innovation leaders, corporate training scouts, and anyone who is inspired to be a project leader.  
  • Learn the full depth and breadth of Modern Comprehensive QFD, including detailed instructions on how to correctly deploy a House of Quality matrix for its full power, with correct data input and prioritization.
  • Learn how to expertly integrate your own process and other quality and design methods such as DFLS, Hoshin, Kansei Engineering, TRIZ, Critical Chain, six sigma DMAIC, StageGates, DFMEA and more. 
  • Templates included (modern QFD, AHP, modern House of Quality, Maximum Value Table, and more), and over 1,000 pages of training manual.
  • Prerequisites: Qualified graduates of the QFD Green Belt® Courses.

If you have attended the above courses more than three years ago, now is the time to refresh your knowledge and skills in these semi-private coaching sessions:
    QFD Update Courses
  • QFD Green Belt® Update Course is the continuing education for QFD Green Belt® graduates. This half-day course is conveniently scheduled on December 7, 2014, 4 PM - 7:30 PM.
  • QFD Black Belt® Update Course is the continuing education for QFD Black Belt® graduates. Attendees of this full-day course on December 7, 2014 receive the latest copy of both QFD Green Belt® and QFD Black Belt® training manuals.
We look forward to meeting you in these Charleston QFD events.



27 July 2013

QFD for cloud computing security, e-learning systems, service industry, FMEA, VOC codification

This continues a preview of the upcoming The 19th International Symposium on QFD (ISQFD) on September 6-7 in Santa Fe, New Mexico USA.

The 2-day symposium welcomes people of all levels QFD, from the beginner to the experienced, people of countries and industries. It is complimentary to the attendees of QFD Green Belt® Certificate Course and QFD Black Belt® Certificate Course  We hope you will join us!

See the previous posts:



QFD and Requirements Prioritization: A Survey on Security Requirements for Cloud Computing

(image - Clound Computing security)Prioritization is an essential task within QFD, and QFD is highly suitable for the development of Cloud Computing (CC) applications where non-functional requirements play a main role. Many of them are security requirements, often the main concern for CC investments. This paper introduces the usage of QFD for Cloud Computing (CC). In this research, CC security requirements were prioritized by pairwise comparison, showing that not all security requirements are equally important. With this finding, the appropriate usage of QFD for CC development will be discussed.

Keywords: QQFD, Requirements Prioritization, Security Requirements, Cloud Computing, GERMANY

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Improving a Learning Management System based on QFD and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

(photo - Service Oriented Architecture QFD for e-learning system)This paper reports how to improve web-based Learning Management Systems (LMS) through integration of the elements of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD).
The users of an LMS are typically invisible to the systems developers and administrators, However, understanding the user needs has high priority in any networked learning systems, in order to develop and implement effective virtual learning services that meet diverse expectations of the users. An example will be presented based on a Turkish platformed LMS.

Keywords: Learning Management System, Service, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), QFD (Quality Function Deployment), TURKEY

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A Study of Service Quality Improvement Using the Theories of Nonverbal Communication, FMEA and QFD

(image - customer service)Study of service industry presents unique challenges because of soft issue measurements such as quality evaluation and service quality.
With this in mind, the authors propose a quality improvement process specifically for service industry. The presentation will include a case study using non-verbal communication, FMEA, and QFD.

Keywords: Service Quality Improvement, QC story, QFD, JAPAN

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A Statistical Engineering Approach to Codifying the Voice of the Customer

(image - HOQ whats and hows)Virtually all design projects involve the collection/processing of the Voice of the Customer to develop a set of requirements to which the producer designs their process/product.Approaches to efficiently and effectively deriving those requirements involve multiple techniques from the fields of market research, quality engineering, design engineering, and inferential statistics. This paper proposes a way to create a logical flow for the Voice of the Customer processing by codifying a series of tools into a linear statistical engineering road-map, and thereby more efficiently populating the House of Quality matrix that uses the "whats" (functions) and "hows" (functional requirements) approach. The exposition is supplemented with a lucid hypothetical example.

Keywords: Voice of Customer, Function Analysis, Kano classification, Analytic Hierarchy Process, Function Requirements, Specifications, Quality Function Deployment, USA



View more papers & presentations

QFD Courses at this symposium

How to Attend


22 May 2013

Can ordinal scale numbers kill you?

This May 19, 2013 article in USA Today might make you nervous. According to a study of 1400 sunscreen products by the Environmental Working Group, many continue to carry SPF ratings that some experts consider misleading and potentially dangerous. The reason, the article states is that:

(photo of sunscreens, source FDA)"SPF numbers like 100 or 150 can give users a false sense of security, leading them to stay in the sun long after the lotion has stopped protecting their skin. Many consumers assume that SPF 100 is twice as effective as SPF 50, but dermatologists say the difference between the two is actually negligible. 

"Where an SPF 50 product might protect against 97% of sunburn-­causing rays, an SPF 100 product might block 98.5% of those rays. There is a popular misconception that the SPF figure relates to a certain number of hours spent in the sun. However this is incorrect, since the level of exposure varies by geography, time of day and skin complexion."

In other words, people believe (as did I until I read this), that SPF numbers were ratio scale and that 100 provided twice the protection of 50. In fact, as this article postulates, they are ordinal and SPF 100 is only 1.5% more protection than SPF 50.

This is the problem with ordinal scales. They confuse people into interpreting numbers the wrong way.

QFD experts have known this problem for many years, and in our early days (1966-1985), we didn't have an easy solution to obtaining ratio scale values from subjective judgments. In the House of Quality (HoQ), rating customer needs or competitive performance on a 1-5 ordinal scale, or enumerating relationship weights using 1,3,5 or 1,3,9 ordinal numbers are examples of ordinal scale subjective judgments. Like SPF, you cannot meaningfully add, subtract, multiply, or divide them.

The solution to the problem came to us QFD folks in 1986 when Dr. Saaty's Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) became available as a PC program, allowing us to accurately convert subjective judgments into ratio scale values. It took me a few projects to see the difference in accuracy. For example, a judgment of "4" on the ordinal scale is usually perceived to be two times a judgment of "2."  But if you convert the 1-5 to ratio using AHP, it turns out that the judgment of " 4" is 26.0% and "2" is 6.8%.  26/6.8= 3.82 meaning that the judgment of a "4" is almost four times the judgment of a "2." Imagine the impact this mistake could have on a multi-million dollar project!

So, if you are not using AHP to calculate ratio scale judgments in your QFD, switch now, before the summer sun kills you.


AHP books by Thomas Saaty, Ph.D.


03 January 2013

Capturing voice of social network and using it

Brian X. Chen reports in the January 2 2013 Bits section of the New York Times, "The iPhone Goofs Up on Telling Time, Again," that the new Do Not Disturb (DND) function on iOS6 iPhone failed to turn off for many users on New Years Day.

This is a new feature that allows iPhone users to set a quiet time (like when you sleep) to block incoming calls and alerts. It is suppose to turn itself off at a pre-determined time so that calls, alerts, and alarms can be heard.This bug is even more noteworthy because it is featured in a new television commercial airing this week. NYT readers first blasted Apple for the bug, and then turned on themselves for whining about such a small inconvenience.

This brings to mind two QFD concepts. The first is the famous "Sales Point" column in the quality planning table room on the right side of the House of Quality matrix (or done independently in Blitz QFD®) where a selling point is given extra weight which eventually strengthens the improvement calculation for related technical requirements. Below is one example of a HOQ with Sales Points weights (the yellow highlighted column).

example - HoQ matrix (partial) with Sales Points weights

The purpose of the "sales points" column has been frequently challenged as it seems to do the same job as the relative importance and the level-up columns, and is thus redundant. Dr. Akao's purpose, however, was to add a sales point value when the associated customer need is going to be promoted, as in the case of this Apple commercial. The added weight would direct engineers and software developers to  pay more attention to its auto on/off functionality.

The second point, I commented myself back to the New York Times:
"I see the DND issue as one of software quality. Developers often have incomplete or inaccurate use cases around which they design their features and code. They do not fully understand how the feature gets used in real life, and so sometimes get it wrong. Like the proverbial mushroom, they are kept in the dark and fed s**t!
It is comments from users like you who post here that can provide the necessary insight to do the job right the first time. There are methods for analyzing the voice of the customer, like QFD, that actually build on your feedback and help marketeers and engineers do their jobs better. So keep on blogging and contributing your experiences - we will all benefit."

My second point is that every opportunity to get customer feedback should be welcomed by a company. Many companies do monitor social media as part of their customer relationships management (CRM) programs, but not all companies forward the information to new product development departments.

The customer voice table is the QFD tool for analyzing these comments. In order to give engineers direction for improvements and next generation products, negatives and complaints should be reversed into positive statements, and technical solutions should be translated into product independent customer needs.

Related Reading...





20 October 2012

Delivering crystal-clear brand identity from end-to-end

"Drunk With Power," an October 14, 2012 New York Times article by Daniel Duane, describes an on-line wine seller named Jon Rimmerman Jon, who earned  his retail cred while at Starbucks. Jon summarizes it as this:

photo of wine
 “the beauty of retail marketing … can be roughly translated as defining a crystal-clear brand identity and then ensuring that everything from the product to customer relations reinforces it."

I like his words, and would like to give them a QFD flavor.

The purpose of modern Blitz QFD® is to define and prioritize with crystal clarity, that which is most important to the customer, and then ensure that everything from the product to customer relations reinforces it.

Let me explain.

"Crystal clarity" of what matters most to customers. In QFD, this means having a customer need that truly states the value proposition to the customer. Typically, this is the benefit a customer receives from having a problem solved, an opportunity enabled, or image enhanced. It should be independent of the product, its features, and its technology. A Voice of Customer (VOC) statement such as "fits in my pocket" is not a customer need, but rather a fuzzy set of dimensions.

With the Customer Voice table, a Blitz QFD® tool, you can translate that into true customer needs such as "I can carry with me easily," "Easy to store in my pocket," "Easy to retrieve from my pocket," "Stays in my pocket when I move around," "Does not damage my pocket,"  etc. This helps us understand these true benefits and avoid later design mistakes resulting in "the product falling on floor when I lean over," "the product tearing my pocket off," "the product is too hard to remove from my pocket when I want to get it out quickly," etc.

Crystal clarity means the need statement must be at a sufficient level of detail to be actionable in design, which is typically a tertiary level on a customer needs hierarchy. Abstract expressions such as "convenient" should be deployed to more detail.

Crystal clarity also means that we have accurate priority values. The QFD community replaced the 1960s' ordinal scale weights with AHP-derived ratio scale weights in the mid-1980s, first in Japan and then later in the US. Unfortunately, most English language QFD books and articles were written before this and missed the update. Even today, new QFD texts still cite these early works, and continue the math errors resulting from using ordinal weights in both customer needs and matrix relationships, as well as misuse of matrices including using a House of Quality matrix (HOQ) when it is not needed.

click to go to International QFD Green Belt® Certificate Course
This is why the QFD Institute Green Belt® and Black Belt® courses are strongly recommended for professionals in product/service/business development, marketing, design, sigma/lean/DMAIC black belts and so forth. You will learn how to use the modern AHP approach and we provide updated Excel templates. Without AHP clarity, your limited resources risk missing what is truly important and deploying lower priority things.

"Ensuring that everything from product to customer relations reinforces it" is the QFD call for end-to-end quality assurance. Depending on your industry, product, and company, this will vary, but typically describes, end-to-end, the full development, commercialization, and retirement of the product, service, or software. In other words, we must assure that any weakness related to the most important customer needs are made robust. For example, if poor packaging compromises the sterility of a medical supply item, it becomes scrap (let's hope!), wastes money, ruins reputations, could result in injury or death, etc., no matter how well the function and performance of the item was designed.

In classical QFD, each of the design, develop, test, procure, produce, assemble, package, ship, store, sell, support, and other commercialization dimensions has its own matrix. Since the matrix only compares two dimensions at at time, anywhere from four to thirty matrices have been identified in the literature. Maybe in the 1960s-80s, we had enough time and people to analyze these, but that is difficult these days.

In Blitz QFD®, all these matrices have been replaced for the most part by a single Maximum Value table. One tool goes end-to-end through all the dimensions. How do we do it – with crystal clarity focus on what matters most to customers. This is where we apply our best efforts, first. Makes sense, doesn't it? The Maximum Value table is one of the key tools taught in the QFD Green Belt® Course and QFD Black Belt® Course.

Additional training dates will be published at QFD Training & Events Calendar as they become confirmed. Or you can e-mail to us.