House of Quality in Quality Function Deployment - Coursework Example

House of Quality in Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Name: Tutor: Course: Date: Abstract Quality Deployment Function (QFD) is used by manufacturing companies to connect customer requirements, design requirements, targeted changes in design and the manufacturing process. The initial stage of this process is the House of Quality or product planning which exploits QFD to enable the top management to adjust to design changes and meet the dynamic needs of customers as well as creating a competitive edge. The report underscores the role of product design change required for a vacuum cleaner to be usable in variety of situations. The report shows that the product is required to work well under dry and wet debris. It should also produce visible cleaning effects and leave no unpleasant smell on the fabric or materials being cleaned. It recommends flexibility of the desired vacuum cleaner to meet the new requirements means that the company will have to increase the product suction power, drive efficiency, dust intake and dust bag filling capacity. The report shows that house of quality brings together customer characteristics, product features and competitor performance for a better product. Key words: Quality Deployment Function, House of Quality, Vacuum cleaner Introduction Products are designed to reflect the tastes and desires of customers. While upholding the foundation of the house of quality, marketers and design engineers work closely with manufacturing staff to create quality products with lower probability of failure or rework. The house of quality comes in when company top executives work as a team with manufacturing executives, designers and marketers. The house is build of customer attributes, product features and engineering characteristics which is linked to the voice of customer (Chan & Wu, 2002; Jaiswal, 2012). Although engineering characteristics provides ways of changing the product, it shapes the engineering decisions that in turn affect customer perceptions to a product (Lowe & Ridgway, 2001). The study explores Hand-Held Vacuum Cleaner as a product of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) defined by customer requirements, design requirements, targeted changes in design and the manufacturing process. This report reviews relevant literature on QFD and House of Quality, and provides the results and discussion of House of Quality with respect to the Vacuum cleaner product. A conclusion is then made based on the results and findings of the report. Survey of Literature Quality Function Deployment is one way a development team structures product development and planning by specifying the needs and wants of customers after which they evaluate the ability of the proposed product to meet customer’s needs (Jaiswal, 2012). The efficiency of design problems are improved early in the design phase since the concept of QFD provides an insight into the manufacturing operation and the entire design. House of Quality is incorporated during product planning to translate customer requirements into technical requirements of the product (Sower et al., 1999). Hauser and Clausing (1988) observe that QFD comprises of quality table matrices exhibiting voice of customer and technical response in a four-phased approach. The house of quality is the initial phase of product planning and it critical to the success of the whole QFD process (Reilly, 2009; Sullivan, 1986). This phase involves technical ability of the firm to meet all the customer requirements, competing product measures, and product measurements. Other issues include competitive opportunities, warranty data and customer requirements documentation (Rosenthal, 2002). According to Dean (1992), the requirements list incorporates the market, environment and the product. With uninformed voice of the customer, it is difficult to assess the environmental impacts of the product. Therefore, the customer specification must take into account customer’s opinion. For example, the most important feature of a vacuum cleaner is to pick up dirt and is strongly related to dust intake, suction power, filter efficiency and filling capacity of dust bags. As a result, it influences customer specifications and the environmental impacts (Mizuno & Akao, 1994). House of Quality measures the relative importance of all the customer attributes to deliberate on the voice of the customer (Delgado & Aspinwall, 2003). By comparing the product performance with the competition, the company gains myriad opportunities for improvement. Moreover, opportunities to expand physical properties of the product arise where customer attributes are not affected by any engineering characteristics (Shin & Kim, 2000). The roof matrix of the house of quality helps engineers, to improve collaterally, all specified engineering features (Vairaktarakis, 1999). The roof of the house has critical information that engineers use to address customer benefits by balancing the trade-offs (Day, 2003; Jaiswal, 2012). Overall, the house of quality establishes clear relations between customer satisfaction and manufacturing functions which are always difficult to visualize. Results and discussions Customer specifications for Hand-Held vacuum cleaner are divided into two; vacuum cleans well and easy and safe to use. Five customer requirements were allocated to each customer voice. Thereafter, a competitive assessment was undertaken in relation to each customer requirements as shown in the figure below. Figure 1: Customer requirements and competitive assessments From the figure above, customer requirements of our company (Company O) are compared with that of the competition. The results show that our company does well in terms of the vacuum cleaner meeting customer requirements regarding low noise, crumbing and dusting well, being handy and portable and being simple and user friendly. However, it also shows that the competition have an edge in relation to producing a product that does well in sucking dry and wet debris. Although the vacuum cleaner of our company leaves ‘no unpleasant smell’ and ‘convenient to use’, it still lags behind company Y in the two requirements. The fact that the company’s innovation of a cordless hand-held device seem not to resonate with customers who are used to the corded vacuum cleaner as they find it more convenient. Figure 2: Customer requirements and product characteristics The figure above attempts to link customer requirements to product characteristics. The product characteristics considered; drive, dust bag, packaging, general handling and sucking action. Drive was represented by drive power and drive efficiency while dust bag featured longevity, filling indicator and usability in various situations. Packaging features weight and size dimensions while general handling is about filter and brush accessibility. On the other hand, suction was indicated by suction power and dust intake. The figure shows that suction power is positively related to the customer requirement of the vacuum cleaner to pick up all dirt types. Similarly, the ability of the vacuum cleaner to collect both dry and wet debris has a strong positive relationship with its flexibility to be used in various situations. However, low noise requirement is negatively correlated to dissipated energy just as handling of simple cleaning jobs is negatively correlated to the lifetime of the dust bag. The product characteristics also indicated that the company needs to maximize suction power, dust bag longevity and filling capacity and minimize dissipated energy and packaging weight. While customers desire for products that are long lasting, they would want to have a product that generates less heat and performs for long hours without overheating. Figure 3: Trade off matrix for the vacuum cleaner The figure above shows a tradeoff mix with a targeted area for improvement. As indicated earlier that the ability of the vacuum cleaner to be used in various situations shows that it is capable of being used in collecting both wet and dry debris. However, this flexibility demands that the vacuum cleaner dissipates more energy and requires high drive power. Design engineers will have to consider increasing the suction power, drive efficiency and filling capacity while lowering drive power and dissipated heat. Again, the company will need to consider reducing the packaging weight while increasing the size dimensions so as to increase the dust filling capacity. Figure 4: Design changes in design The design changes shows that the company intends to maximize drive efficiency, suction power dust filling capacity and dust bag longevity. Although it will minimize dissipated energy in terms of heat it intends to target the ability of the vacuum cleaner to be applicable in various situations. For example, the vacuum cleaner should be able to work well when collecting both wet and dry debris. This means that the design of the new vacuum cleaner that meets this customer requirement should have higher suction power and dissipates less heat. It should also have longer life span (more than 8 years) and higher dust bag filling capacity (at least 550cm3). While the estimated costs are generally lower compared to the estimated impacts, the dust intake of this vacuum cleaner is high in terms of cost. Companies spend a lot of resources in designing smaller intake ports with more auction power especially when concentrated (Abele et al., 2013). The table above shows that the drive power of our company is less than that of company Y. Customers demands a vacuum cleaner that is capable of withstanding high pressure suction during collection of wet and dry debris. The requires that the company work on a vacuum cleaner that has high drive power and drive efficiency. This will be supported by high suction power cleaner with higher airwatts or cu. ft/min (CFM). On the other hand, maximizing suction power means that the vacuum cleaner will produce a lot of noise. This means that the company should be able to produce a machine that is applicable in variety of situations. The company can increase the level of noise to acceptable level but reduce the dissipated heat generated as dissipated energy. Figure 5: House of Quality for Vacuum cleaner The figure above shows a complete house of quality with all the aspects of product planning in place. The target characteristic for improvement is ‘usability in various situations’. This means that the vacuum cleaner will be better innovated if can work well in both wet and dry debris. However, this aspect is negatively correlated to the drive power but positively correlated to suction power. Since the drive power and drive efficiency are positively correlated, it means that the vacuum cleaner uses less power and dissipates less heat. On the contrary, it will require that it has high suction power to perform both wet and dry debris collection. This is necessitated by reduction of resistance in within the power unit that is caused by increased filtration system resistance, turbulence in tubing and horse and restrictions as the cleaning nozzles touch the floor. Yet, this will be more costly for the company as it will have to increase the suction power and dust intake. The available options for the designers are to consider the performance of filtering systems, dust bag performance and air flow through the system. The marketing data shows that customers desire vacuum cleaners with low noise, leaves no unpleasant smell and demonstrate visible cleaning effects. The other customer requirements such as being simple and user friendly and convenient during use are not as important as the above mentioned requirements. It can be noted that our company uses a lot of motor power to keep the suction power high which has paid because the drive efficiency is also high. Nonetheless, the top management should consider arriving at a compromising situation to cut costs of the consumer with regard to powering the vacuum cleaner. Another customer requirement ‘easy emptor-collector’ is positively related to ‘dust bag filling indicator’ and ‘usability in various situations’. This aspect is also critical to the company since it has less competitive edge compared to the two competitors, X and Y. Although the customer attribute of ‘convenient to use’ is least important in terms of relative importance, the company is also lagging behind the two competitors. Again, usability in various situations is negatively correlated to the ability of vacuum cleaner to hoover crumbs and dust well. This is because the machine will have to be larger and draws more power which will make it less portable. Our company will continue being edged by company Y which has succeeded in producing a machine that is convenient for use, handles simple cleaning jobs and hoovers crumbs and dust well. To remain competitive, the company will have to work on customer requirement of ‘convenient to use’ and ‘handling of simple cleaning jobs’ by increasing filter and brush accessibility. Meanwhile, packaging size dimensions seem not to have any relationship at all with the customer requirements except in relation ‘pleasant smell’ and visible cleaning effects’. The current dimensions of the vacuum cleaner are 43*13*12cm and are of black and white color. The aspect of color was less significant but size dimensions could be altered to make it less heavy and more presentable. Conclusion This report applied the Quality Deployment Function (QFD) to reflect on innovation and design changes to a vacuum cleaner based on customer requirements. The House of Quality which marks the initial stage of product planning has shown that it can be used in QFD to advise top management on key areas that require design changes to meet the changing needs of customers and edge out competitors. The report found that the key product design change required is for the product to be usable in variety of situations. This situation includes working well under dry and wet debris, producing visible cleaning effects and producing or leaving no unpleasant smell on the fabric or materials being cleaned. However, the flexibility of the desired vacuum cleaner to meet the new requirements means that the company will have to increase the product suction power, drive efficiency, dust intake and dust bag filling capacity. The report found that house of quality combines customer characteristics, product features and competitor performance to create innovative and competitive vacuum cleaner product. References Abele, E. & Anderl, R. & Birkhofer, H. (2013). 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Optimization tools for design and marketing of new/improved products using the house of quality. Journal of Operations Management, Vol.17, 645- 663. Useful links http://www.clasohlson.com/uk/Wet-&-Dry-Handheld-Vacuum-Cleaner/18-4717#moreinfo Read More