An Apple a day — Use QFD to systematize Steve Jobs' design genius beyond a single individual

In my opinion, late Steve Jobs was a rare individual who had such an intuitive grasp of the fundamentals of QFD thinking. For example, in the April 1, 1989 interview with Inc. Magazine, he was asked by reporters Bo Burlingham and George Gendron, "Where do great products come from?"

This is what Jobs said:

"I think really great products come from melding two points of view-the technology point of view and the customer point of view. You need both.

"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new. It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we'd given customers what they said they wanted, we'd have built a computer they'd have been happy with a year after we spoke to them-not something they'd want now..."

Let me put this in QFD perspective.

We see two common flows in the way QFD is practiced: forward and reverse. Forward QFD begins with the voice of the customer which is often a mixture of "what they want," that is product performance, features, and technology. Because customers rarely know what the future may bring, their voice is typically tied to the past or present.

As Jobs points out, the product may be sufficient for the past, but insufficient at the time of launch or during its useful life. You can ask customers what they want as a starting point of a QFD analysis. The tool for this analysis is the Customer Voice table; its purpose is to translate voice of customer (VOC) into true customer needs. In this table, we explore with customers why they want something.

For example, a customer in a café may state "I need a hot cup of coffee," but what they really need is "I am cold and I want to warm up." Using Jobs logic, you could produce a cup of coffee that was too hot to drink, thus forcing the customer to wait until it cooled down. You would give them what they asked (hot), but not really meet their needs (warm up).

In modern QFD, we define a customer need as being product-independent, and that is the first step in creating great product.  Read More ...

Mirror Neurons – the science behind "gemba" ?

Recent studies on the behavior of monkeys in a research lab in Parma Italy accidentally found that brain neurons that fired when a monkey picked up a peanut, also fired when a monkey watched a human pick up a peanut.

Ongoing research in these so-called "mirror neurons" in humans have discovered what might be the root-cause of empathy. When we see someone performing a task, it triggers the same neurons as if had been doing the same task ourselves.

A recent discovery has also shown that people on the "empowered" side of a relationship lose some ability to fire these mirror neurons compared to those on the "unempowered" side of the relationship.  (See the report and video at NOVA: Mirror Neurons)

For QFD practitioners, this gives strong support for the power of gemba visits. Unlike surveys and questionnaires which are passive, going to gemba to observe and even participate in activities with our customers, apparently triggers empathy in our brains that may improve how we understand our customers and how we innovate solutions to their problems. Further, this latest research suggests that if we empower the customer to lead the gemba visit, we consequently unempower ourselves, thus improving our ability to empathize.

Wow! I've been teaching "go to the gemba" for twenty years and now have an explanation for why this works so well, especially for bringing marketing and technical people together to better understand customers.

The tools we've developed, which are now core in the Blitz QFD® approach and taught in the QFD Green Belt® course are designed to capture this implicit mirroring process and make it explicit. The result has been more marketing-technical teams attending both public and in-company Blitz QFD® training.

Why not join our next course on September 4-5, 2013 in Santa Fe NM and learn how to put your mirror neurons to good use!

QFD for membership organization, industrial design, workplace vitalization, high-speed rail, Turkish region

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

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

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QFD for Membership Organizations — Practicing What We Teach

This keynote reports an ongoing QFD initiative at the International Academy for Quality (IAQ), a membership organization founded in 1966 by Dr. Armand Feigenbaum along with European and Japanese quality experts. 
The IAQ's growing membership in developing nations means that member needs have to be periodically assessed and incorporated into future activities, beyond its original missions of facilitating an international exchange of quality expertise to promote quality throughout all nations.The keynote will discuss the QFD process being used to reassess current member needs and plan future programs, including the data from member surveys, as well as the results to date and ongoing improvements to the organization.

Keywords: Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Modern Blitz QFD^®, Voice of Customers (VOC), Membership Organization

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Towards QFD-based Industrial Design

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). Customer Orientation is achieved within QFD by a systematic approach. Within industrial design, requirements of the customer are also analyzed and deployed with the power of artistic creativity and less with a systematic or qualitative approach. This paper proposes an integration of QFD and industrial design to take advantage of the strength from each method. The presentation will include a case study and a framework for QFD-based Industrial Design.

Customer-Orientation, Industrial Design, Conceptual Integration, Conceptual Map, Deisgn Concept, Product Catalogue, GERMANY

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Quality and Safety Control Method of High-speed Rail Based on QFD & FMEA

This academic paper from a Chinese university presents the use of 4-phase model approach and FMEA in order to address the control quality and safety issues associated with China's high-speed rail systems.
The case uses hypothetical scenario and literature sources.

Keywords: Quality and Safety, QFD, FMEA, High-speed rail, CHINA

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QFD for activating a workplace Ba—Part 2

The various components of QFD draw out member's tacit knowledge through "Ba" (the workplace gemba). In order to achieve this, the "Ba" must be invigorated with changes that encourage the individuals to express and share his/her tacit knowledge. This presentation, a sequel to the author's 2012 presentation, will examine the relationship between QFD and "Ba" from the viewpoint of cognitive engineering and social-psychology, including some examples from the author's company practice.

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Ba, Job Function Deployment, Workplace, JAPAN

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A Critical Analysis of the Turkish Literature on QFD

This study, based on the published resources produced between 2000 and 2012, provides a holistic picture on the current state of QFD in the Turkish region, both in private industry sectors and academic research field.
Specifically, it identifies the levels of awareness and prevalence of QFD methodology in the region, the purpose for the usage, implementation levels, difficulties, and overall analysis. With economic activities rapidly globalizing and competitive pressure mounting, this knowledge can be the competitive differentiators for the developing nations such as Turkey as they will compete more on the global stage. It also offers academic researchers a solid comprehensive reference on the state of QFD applications and studies in this economically growing region.

Keywords: Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Literature Review, TURKEY

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QFD for input device and software QA, university e-portfolio, fashion and apparel manufacturing, global markets

This continues a preview of the exciting presentations planned for 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 for public transportation, software development, eco-friendly supply chain 

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

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Application of QFD to the Symptom Analysis of Input-device Software Defects

The traditional function/regression tests following the design specification do not adequately ensure software quality, due to the evaluation complexity posed by various input-device software such as USB, wireless communication device, sensor, LCD display technologies, etc. This presentation, by a worldwide leader of graphic tablets, will show a better method for evaluating and analyzing software defects by correctly assessing the symptoms of the original causes of failures and then identifying the relationships between the operations and subjects through the use of the function deployment tables and state transition tables.

Keywords: Software QA, QFD, FTA, Symptom Analysis, Test Coverage, Evaluation Deployment, JAPAN

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Improvement of University e-Portfolio System in Consideration of Students' Demands

Using a QFD approach, demand analysis and factor analysis were performed for the successful introduction of the e-Portfolio system in a public university in Japan.By analyzing the students' demands and factors of an existing software, the researchers were able to turn the e-Portfolio system software into an information infrastructure that can be fully utilized by students for their study, helping them complete their own study plan efficiently.

Quality Assurance in Higher Education, e-Portfolio, Requirement Analysis, Software Development, JAPAN

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Starting QFD for Clothing Manufacturers in Hong Kong

Some 20 years ago, the clothing manufacturers in Hong Kong only had to deal with the sewing or knitting of the samples for fashion designers.
Today they are expected to provide technical design services as well as sample development process. The increasing degree of abstractness and the shift from quantitative to qualitative nature of technical data have created many communication problems. This paper will identify the areas in which QFD can help Hong Kong clothing manufacturers in their development and design activities, while also outlining the effective QFD approaches.

Keywords: Clothing Manufacturers, Apparel Manufacturing, QFD, Hong Kong, CHINA

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Global QFD — From Japan to the World

Since its conception in Japan in 1966, QFD continues to advance and spread across the world. In this keynote, the global history of QFD will be presented by a founder of the methodology.

The talk will share the inaugural training and projects that Dr. Akao was personally involved in each country, such as South Korea (1981), Taiwan (1882), USA (1983), Italy (1988), and many more. Businesses with international operations may gain an unusual insight into how their overseas competitors might be using QFD in what levels and which regions to look out for in the future.

Keywords: Global QFD, History of QFD, Quality Function Deployment, Japan, USA, South Korea, Taiwan, Italy

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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!

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Study of Applying QFD to Modularity Strategy

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

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.

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

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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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
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
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
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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More Presentations ...

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Is it advantageous to be first or to be better?

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

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:

"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.

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