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



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QFD for modular design, value creation, business development, organic products development

Here are more exciting presentations planned for the upcoming The 19th International Symposium on QFD (ISQFD) on September 6-7 in Santa Fe, New Mexico USA.

(See the previous post: QFD for public transportation, software development, eco-friendly supply chain )

The 2-day International Symposium welcomes people of all levels of QFD knowledge, all industries and countries, and it is complimentary to the attendees of QFD Green Belt® Certificate Course and QFD Black Belt® Certificate Course  We hope you will join us!



Study of Applying QFD to Modularity Strategy

(image - Modularity design)
Japanese manufactures are excellent at developing integral type products, such as cars and complicated machines that need fine tuning (e.g. semiconductor manufacturing machines). However, many products are currently shifting toward modular systems which require better architectures and modularity logic and rules. This presentation will show how to better define modular product architectures through the analytic structure of QFD, specifically how to arrange many complex issues such as customer needs, cost, technology, manufacturing feasibility, serviceability and so forth in a series of matrices so that modularity can be better simulated.

Keywords: QFD, Modularity, Modular, Integral Components, Modular Design, JAPAN

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Quality Function Deployment for New Product Development: Transforming Waste to Worth

(image - Creating Value and Worth from Waste)
This paper reports an application of QFD by the Thailand's chemical industry leader, SCG Chemicals. The company was able to develop a new eco-friendly construction material out of a chemical byproduct waste. The new product not only offers added functional value but also is boosting the customer's brand image. The presentation will report an application of QFD for this New Product Development, most challengingly in eliciting the needs from psychological elements and deploying them into design specifications, development process, souring, and other considerations for successful product roll-out.

Keywords: QFD, Psychological Characteristics, Voice of Customer, Customer Satisfaction, Product Design, Brand Image, Eco-friendly Product, THAILAND

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Top technology is not all we need for a successful business: QFD logic, methods and tools —Dutch experience.

(photo - QFD for Business Development, EU application)
This presentation will report a pilot project in The Netherlands, the utilization of QFD for business development. The talk will share the Dutch experience of the customer-centered marketing campaigns based on the Voice of the Customer (VOC) and Modern QFD techniques. This approach provided the logical, systematic, and interactive links between the commercial and technology teams in one organization. 

Keywords: Modern QFD, Business Development, Business Analysis, VOC, THE NETHERLANDS

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Application of QFD for the Development of An Organic Product: A Pilot Study

(image - QFD for Organic Products development)
This presentation will report a pilot QFD application for the development of an organic product. A conceptual model which consists of four matrices for the development of an organic fruit jelly will be presented. The main adaptation is in the first matrix to include major actors in the production supply chain. The first results indicate the feasibility of the proposal for food development. 

Keywords: Product Development, Organic Products, QFD, BRAZIL



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21 July 2013

QFD for public transportation, software development, eco-friendly supply chain

The 2013 International Symposium on QFD (ISQFD) will be held on September 6-7 in Santa Fe, New Mexico USA.

Whether you are new to QFD or have many years of experience, this ISQFD will be an excellent opportunity to find out how QFD is used today in real projects, how much the method has advanced in recent years, innovative new tools / applications / research, as well as global trends in new product development and design quality.

This and next few posts will introduce the exciting presentations that are planned for September 6–7. We hope you will join us.

PS: This 2-day symposium is complimentary to the attendees of QFD Green Belt®, QFD Black Belt®, and Update courses.
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Application of QFD within a Co-opetition Network of Public Transport Organizations
(image - public transportation)This case study reports a QFD application in German public transportation systems. Companies that provide public transportation services are competitors as well as cooperative partners. In this setting of co-opetition (competitive cooperation), QFD is being applied with the vision of offering passengers (customers) seamless transportation services. This is an ongoing research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The presentation will discuss adaptations in application methods as well as lessons learned.
Keywords: Public Transport, Co-opetition Network, Cluster Analysis, QFD Case Study



Software Development Method Based on Twin Peaks Model with QFD
(image - Twin Peaks Model)In software system development, it is important to analyze the stakeholders'  requirements and design the architecture. One proposed method for this is the twin peaks model which intertwines software requirements and architectures to achieve incremental development and speedy delivery. The researchers used QFD to clarify these relationships in hope to propose more efficient software development.
Keywords: Software Development, Requirements, Architecture Design


Modern QFD Application on a Supply Chain to Become Green
(image - Green Supply Chain)Increasing concerns for resource scarcity and global pollution beseeches us for more environmentally friendly practice in supply chain management. This study is based on the voice of customer (VoC) data collected from the aluminum accessories industry located in Izmir, Turkey. Using the Modern QFD's Maximum Value Table, the VOC were deployed into technical characteristics that are essential for the greener practices of the sector's supply chain management. This project is going to provide the academicians an insight into usability of Modern QFD and to the industry professionals the methods for extending their green activities. 
Keywords: Green Supply Chain Management, Modern QFD, Maximum Value Table, Aluminum sector

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02 July 2013

Is it advantageous to be first or to be better?

(illustration - internet radio)Newsweek magazine recently published an article "The Myth of First-Mover Advantage" about iTune entering the Internet radio business, thus challenging the well-established Pandora head-on. The article summarized the successes and failures of companies that are first-to-market.

This questions is commonly asked by QFD practitioners:
Is it advantageous to be first or to be better?

My thoughts:

Advantage belongs to first-movers if they continuously put themselves "out of business" before a new competitor does. This requires an on-going assessment of changing customer needs and producing corresponding features. QFD can mitigate the risk of first-mover's typical "technology push" mentality by building a "market pull" approach.

Customers will churn products as they mentally perform cost-benefit analyses of alternatives. Costs include purchase price, cost to change in terms of training, support, maintenance, disposal of old product, etc. To overcome these, the benefits of the new offering either by the original First-Mover or the new competitor must be overwhelmingly substantial in solving the customer problem, enabling a customer opportunity, or enhancing the customer's image.

Glenn

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.


28 April 2013

The joke is on us (consumers)

Take a look at this video. It is about a Google Japan project to develop a better interface for typing Japanese.

Owning to its complex writing system (several thousand Chinese characters mingled with two sets of 51 phonetic alphabets), keyboarding Japanese became feasible only in 1970s. Even today with advancements in software and AI, typing Japanese remains highly cumbersome, compared to Romance languages such as English, Spanish, French, etc.

So when Google Japan announced its intention to design a better way to type, the project sounded like a worthy effort.


Google Japan video, April 2013 (http://youtu.be/HzUDAaYMNsA)  Click "CC" for English caption.

Have you noticed the intriguing initial concept based on drum-playing? Granted, Google has always been known for quirky ideation, but many Japanese viewers thought this was an absurd, if interesting, departure from the traditional keyboard.

Alas, the complexity of the Japanese language necessitated infinite drums to be added (to accommodate thousands of characters), resulting in an inoperably massive drum assembly. Did you see that?

To solve this problem, the Google engineers did what many project teams typically do: They gathered in a meeting room to brainstorm.

Does it sound pretty normal to you, so far?

After many days of brainstorming, one day while waiting for a commuter train, an engineer had an epiphany: A split-flap input display system (the old-fashioned mechanism that flips panels to display departure/arrival information for trains, airplanes, etc.).

Did you see that?

Then comes the really eccentric part: Since people today prefer everything mobile, the Google team decides to build this new Japanese input system in the form of funky eye wear (Google glasses for the 19th century)!  Now you can type Japanese wherever you are simply by blinking your eyes.

See that?  What else did you notice?

The real scoop is, while users of Gmail in the US were greeted with the total ‘blue’ screen prank on April Fools’ Day, Google Japan made an elaborate effort to produce this video prank instead. What is interesting is that many people failed to discern the joke.

We showed this video to our colleagues in Japan, many whom are professors of Information Technology and Business. Here is what they said, which also resembles the comments of many Japanese Youtube viewers:

“It is an interesting concept, but I found it difficult to understand.”
“It looks hard to use for me, but young people like this?”
“The initial drum concept looked interesting; it is too bad that the final product departed from it.”
“Who is the wholesaler of this product? Can I get in touch?”

People did not get the joke, perhaps, because even today real life product development often resembles what the Google team portrayed in the video. That is, a team of experts gathers in a meeting room, discusses product ideas out of thin air, brainstorms design issues with each other, and eventually (hopefully) someone has a lucky break for a final product idea that might reflect solutions to the engineering problems at hand, but pay little regard to customer gemba and their real needs.

Without knowledge of customer-centric approaches like QFD and practical experience of how to implement the DFCV (design for customer value) such as gemba tools and maximum value table in Blitz QFD®, the product development in this April Fools’ video came across to many as a rather reasonable, realistic way that many businesses still conduct product development. I hope yours is different.

Learn better ways of product development… QFD Green Belt® Certificate Course




24 March 2013

How to calculate customer value

Value to a customer = what he gets / what he gives.
image - customer valueWe make a sale when this number is >1. Both the numerator and denominator are in the customer's domain; they determine what they get — benefit, and what they pay — price, effort to use, risk of change.

The problem with many quality methods is that they focus on what companies give — product and features, and not on what customers get — value and benefit.

That is why QFD is an essential tool. It is the best method I know that can link together the customer benefit and the product features, thus assuring that developers focus first and best where it matters most to the customer.

The trick is to understand what your customers want to get and what they will pay BEFORE you design. That way you don't have to keep fixing things later. Traditional House of Quality assumes you have complete and accurate customer needs. My 27 years of QFD experience tells me otherwise. You must go deeper than what customers tell you if you want a competitive advantage. This is what the modern Blitz QFD® tools do.

The 2013 International QFD Symposium (ISQFD) will be held in Santa Fe this September. Come meet Dr. Akao (QFD founder) and learn these new Blitz tools.

19 March 2013

What does Akao say? Mu!

A recent poll on the LinkedIn group Lean Six Sigma Worldwide asked:

"Which Lean Six Sigma waste reduction (Muda, Mura, Muri) is the most effective way to increase profitability?"

Quality professionals know the first three Mu as three Japanese words: Muda meaning waste, Muri meaning strain, and Mura meaning discrepancy.

I'd like to add a 4th Mu to the list – Muchakucha ムチャクチャ meaning horrendous, reckless, confused and messy, and mad. In other words, don't blindly follow what others do.

There has been much discussion in the lean and six sigma communities that, like TQM a few years ago, these quality initiatives have become too vanilla flavored and over hyped to the point of diminishing returns. This is the result of failing to custom tailor the tools and training to the cultural DNA of the organization.

Our QFD community faced this problem early on when House of Quality (the tool) became synonymous with QFD (the process). Companies in every industry copied the truncated 4-house auto parts model, became overwhelmed by its simultaneous complexity (takes too much time) and simplicity (doesn't address my problem), and quickly burned out. By the mid-1990s, Dr. Yoji Akao was sufficiently worried that QFD would be abandoned, and he asked the QFD Institute to find a way to make QFD more adaptable and faster.

The result was the Blitz QFD® approach which now precedes and can sometimes replace the House of Quality and subsequent matrices. It is highly scalable and adaptable, and is the core of what we now teach in the QFD Green Belt® and QFD Black Belt® courses.

Now, specifically to the LinkedIn poll question: Profit is the difference between revenue and cost. The Lean and six sigma community focus on the cost side – remove waste, improve productivity. There is a limit, though, on cost reduction. Theoretically, once you reach zero cost, where can you go?

QFD, on the other hand, focuses on the revenue side. If we can provide more value to customers by helping them solve their problems, enable their opportunities, and improve their image, then more customers will pay more money for the product or service.  The limit is the size of the global market. Smart customers (the ones you want) won't mind paying 99 cents for one dollar of benefit.





13 March 2013

Siri — Far out and far off!

A hilarious thing happened when I was in Orlando, Florida earlier this month, giving the QFD Green  Belt® Course.

photo: Apple iPhone Siri telling me to drive 2,500 miles to California when Disney is only 5 miles away from our Orlando FL hotel.
One evening after a day of teaching, some of us decided to go to dinner in Downtown Disney, a popular shopping, dining, and entertainment area located just over 5 miles (8-9 km) from where we were.

Sitting in the rental car in the hotel parking lot, I turned to Siri on my Apple iPhone and asked for the driving directions. I had driven to Downtown Disney two days before, so it should not be a new location to Siri.

What happened next was totally unexpected and perplexing, to say the least. Siri, with her usual serious tone, mapped out a 36-hour drive to Downtown Disney in Anaheim, California, over 2,500 miles (4023 km) away from Orlando, Florida . All passengers in the car burst out laughing.

We gave Siri several more chances to correct herself, specifying “Orlando, Florida,” but each time Siri came back with the same response, generating the driving map across the entire continental America. (the photo above)


04 March 2013

DFSS / DFLS and QFD: Why we need both

A recent QFD newsletter discussed the similarities and differences of DFSS/DFLS and QFD and why it is not an "either-or" question but that we need both to deliver business success.

(illustration - dfss/dfls vs qfd)
This is because the focus of DFSS (design for six sigma) and DFLS (design for lean sigma) is our internal products and processes, whereas the focus of QFD (quality function deployment) is our customers. The differences between the sigma approaches and QFD are especially notable in these areas:
  • Focus
  • Customer understanding
  • VOC (voice of customer) analysis
  • CRM (customer requirements management) and priority
  • Solutions identification and delivery
  • Design, Development, and Commercialization
  • Math

In short, QFD provides a holistic approach that links business, customer, and technology in one end-to-end trackable flow with the goal of customer value — DFCV (design for customer value). QFD uses quantitative and non-quantitative tools to analyze the unknown unknowns, information that leads to sustainable competitiveness.

(illustration: QFD + DFSS/DFLS = Happy Customer)DFSS provides a powerful set of statistical and analytic tools that can improve the efficiencies and effectiveness during the build of new products. QFD provides the umbrella of customer value as the driver and DFSS kicks in downstream to assure that solutions are optimally developed. We need both together in order to deliver customer satisfaction and business success.

Here is the detailed comparison of the sigma and QFD approaches and the reasons why we must use both: "DFSS/DFLS and QFD"