Characteristics of Quality Function Deployment - Essay Example

Quality Function Deployment: Application and Findings By Devangini Mahapatra Chauhan Quality Function Deployment: If we are to consider the characteristics of Quality Function Deployment (QFD), we would have to start with a short history of this 'phenomenon' lent to the world by the Japanese along with a comparison of sorts with traditional quality systems. Developed as a quality system close to thirty years ago in Japan, QFD basically concentrates on delivering such goods and services that spell nothing less than optimum customer satisfaction. That said, in more technical epistemology, QFD can be termed as a methodology involved in the development of the mechanics that go into the act of reaching such products to that target market. What sets it apart from traditional quality systems is its need to focus on work standards, automation to eliminate people or simply empowering employees when it comes to solving their problems. The current scenario is one where QFD has been heralded for providing a platform where needs like promotion of cross - functional teams, communication between departments as well translation of consumer needs into the language of the organization, are consciously confronted and fulfilled. Issues that are commonly encountered in the application of the QFD model include: Choosing a subset of the performance measures to concentrate on. Identifying the 'owner' of each of the performance measures. Conducting a thorough analysis of each of the measures. Doing a formal cost benefit analysis. Application of QFD: The company we are to study in regard to application of QFD is the Host Marriott. To set a background, it would be imperative to take a look at certain facts. Three recent trends have led to changes in the way travellers view food served at airports, which are as follows: Healthier and lighter food. Increase in the number of women travellers Serving of fewer on-board meals. Host Marriott is a company that gained origin in 1897, as a purveyor of food, beverage, news and general merchandise in railway stations - the leading form of mass transport during that period. A continuity in serving that market can be seen in respect of a 70% market share of the food and beverage sale in US airports. Apart from operating food, beverage and merchandise facilities in travel plazas on 12 east coast and Midwestern highways, Host currently commands $1.2 billion in sales per year from over 2,000 units in 170 locations worldwide. Its main competition comes from 40 different types of regional and international branded products like Burger King, Taco Bell and TGI Fridays, among others that constitute 65% of this business. Host Marriott wanted to assure that its product offerings were keeping up with customer demands which deliberated efforts to find a quality system that was modern and more consumer - oriented. In an effort to begin by customizing the QFD road map for the company, Host elected to explore all deployments in Comprehensive Service QFD in order to thoroughly examine all facets for applicability beyond the current project. This exercise was carried out in keeping with the observation that although Host had previously experimented with the House of Quality, this was their first attempt at Comprehensive Service QFD. This customisation process formally began in March 1995, with a one day QFD overview presented to executives of both Marriott International as well as Host. Coming down to the 'Bagel Project', as Host likes to call it, the details include an outline of its various deployments, because it was believed that as a service, there are fewer large capital investments than in manufacturing companies, which makes it possible to experiment in a "living lab" and make modifications relatively quickly. QFD, therefore, would need to be tailored to address these simpler business needs - a requirement fulfilled by the Kano Model as depicted below. This figure depicts the Kano model according to which service businesses must meet all three types of requirements i.e., revealed, expected and exciting - and not just what the customer says. To explain why this model was chosen for the application of QFD to this project, it would be important to explain that Kano's model has an additional dimension regarding which customer segments the target markets include, as knowing which customer segment one serves is critical to understanding their requirements. This facilitates eliminating problems to handle expected requirements as it is believed that there is little satisfaction or competitive advantage when nothing goes wrong. Thus, the various deployments are reached in terms of the application of this model, as follows: a) Customer Deployment: at this stage, determining the key customers needed to be satisfied was agreed upon as a useful course of action. The logic behind this was the fact that exceeding or meeting the expectations of the most important customers would lead to the rest taking care of itself. The generic model of customer deployment can be seen to be flowing from identifying and prioritizing project success criteria to doing the same in the case of customer segmentation. Careful analysis of the data gathered in this process exposed the company to a plethora of findings that included the fact that more bagel varieties and flavoured cream cheeses were the order of the day. In keeping with this observation, the baked goods tree was prioritised in a matrix from the project goals and their priority weights, in order to determine which bagel goods would prove most successful for achievement of the project goals. On this basis, the bagels were selected. The customer deployment matrices are depicted below. b) Quality Deployment: The next phase involved functions that would translate customer benefits into service measurements and performance targets that would assist in designing the new bagel service right the first time round. At the end, while the top four performance measures were selected for improvement measures, the rest were to be maintained at the current level of performance It was found that the top four performance measures were giving 50%-60% of a display case to bagels, which in turn increased the number of bagel varieties from two to six, increasing the topping varieties from three to five; a choice that facilitated the decision of providing add on s like toasted or heated bagels during servings. c) Function Deployment: Following specification of performance targets, it was deemed fit to determine which of those activities would be affected and the people who would be responsible for maintenance of these standards. A two step approach - first a general matrix and then a specific one - was generated to identify the functions that would be required for implementation of the desired changes. The matrix deployed the quality attributes and their priority weights from the bottom of the House of Quality towards prioritisation of the most critical business functions for assurance of success of the new bagel service. It showed that the Commissary, sourcing, acquiring and shipping of the new products would be critical. At the operations level, display and maintenance of the attractive appearance of the bagels was identified as crucial. The sourcing thus began right after the big bagel vendors and cream cheese producers were contacted as to what the current favourites were. d) Reliability Deployment: When making use of comprehensive QFD, it is important to assure that any new processes employed are not failure prone in the course of development of a new service, which led Host to an identification of potential fail points following which there was a concerted effort towards elimination of the same during design of the service. The fail points were prioritised by deploying the demanded qualities from the House of Quality into the reliability matrix - where the highest fail point was considered to be running out of stock. e) New Concept Deployment: It was during this phase of the study that the company had come to understand customer preferences and choices, key functions and potential failures to be avoided, in a far better way than it did at the onset. For e.g., besides new cutting devices, Host explored and analyzed alternative concepts to par - baked and frozen bagels - an area its competitors were doing extremely well in. Further, different display cases, heating equipment, sourcing of bagels and cream cheese were worked into process flows and examined for their ability to meet the requirements. Appropriate signage was also developed. f) Task Deployment: The purpose of task deployment has been recognised as one that assigns the person responsible, timing, location, equipment, skill or training, performance and self inspection requirements, for each step in the newly developed process. On being met, the new process is assured that it can meet all the requirements specified as well the most important customer benefits, which will result in the achievement of those goals of the project as defined at the beginning of application of the QFD model. Thus, the best laid plans achieved fruition when individuals were made responsible for carrying out specific tasks in a manner that would achieve the targets that were planned and designed in the previous steps. Standardisation: It has been commonly believed that until the on going performance of the new system is proven, no project can be called complete. In this case, since QFD is a Total Quality Management (TQM) approach, standards for initial and on going training of employees and associates, vendor compliance, etc., were created. August saw the completion of the tests as well as the development of standards by the QFD team as compiled and published in a booklet titled, "Sales Double: QFD Bagel Project - a QFD Approach". This booklet is entrusted with the job of demonstrating the specifications, procedures, policies, equipment and expected results of this new service. Finally, this standard was found to be adopted by the F&B standards department as the standard for the company's entire range of generic units that sell bagels. Further, at the Eighth Symposium of the QFD Institute quoted Host's example of QFD application as one of the more successful and well planned efforts. Findings and Conclusion: The company had started out by stating through a spokesman that Host Marriottt remained committed to improving business at the airport in a statement released to The Wichita Eagle of Kansas Com. Further, in the same publication, Steve Habtemariam of Host Marriottt said, "It gives us strength when we see the public support for what we do at the airport, it gives us strength to do things even better." All this was in regard to the policies followed by Host Marriottt in a bid to better its services. Now, back to statistics. The first part of the findings in the course of application of the QFD model to the Marriott Host is in context of sales results. As a result of the QFD efforts, sales volumes doubled at airport kiosks (50% in two weeks), and after one year sales evened out at more than double their previous year's level. Tracking of the changes in customer choices showed how the product was perceived which led to dramatic improvements in the key customer benefits of more bagel and cream cheese varieties apart from heating and appearance options. The benefits of applying QFD were proved to be very high for this project. Within one month, a sales jump of two to three times was achieved which sustained itself over a period of six months, thus speaking of staying power of customer satisfaction in terms of focus on the customer and subsequent standardisation of the resulting improvements. Careful analysis was then observed to have resulted in great improvement of job responsibilities for the day to day processes involved in the new system. In its efforts to gain assurance regarding the fact that its product offerings were keeping up with the customer demands, the company discovered that its traditional approach to new product and service development was penny profit driven and not customer oriented. The Utility of QFD was seen in its capacity to give more importance to quality and customer satisfaction, which is a major reason as to why it was employed. Further, it was around that period that the company had begun an assessment of its strengths and weaknesses for the next decade through a strategic planning process, where specific competitive opportunities were identified. For this purpose, QFD was believed to be different from traditional quality systems; which had not been overly successful, as mentioned above, in the sense that the best one can get with those systems is a "nothing is wrong" plan, which does not equal the notion that "everything is right". On the contrary, a modern system like QFD had that edge over such systems as it created value by eliminating poor service and maximising positive quality. For this particular project at Host Marriott, the QFD system worked because it is the only comprehensive system aimed at maximising consumer satisfaction - a goal that had taken top priority at the company's planning level where competition had been estimated to be extremely stiff. Further, the company needed a system that would give impetus to the process of translating facts and figures as well as raw data into actual functions and processes within the company and the market place thriving outside it. This was needed to be carried out in context of value addition as well as accurate requirement estimation, which QFD fulfilled with its universally applicable and modern principles. Therein lay the secret to the success of its applicability at Host Marriott. Needless to say though, there were a few difficulties that were encountered in the application of the QFD model to Host Marriott's Bagel Project. The first of these was the sheer size of the company and its operations. Host Marriott is a huge organisation that has a wide ranging operations base - applying a new model to this gamut of activities across various countries was an extremely difficult task as everything needed to be well coordinated and planned. Apart from this was the expenditure involved in training of employees and associates as well the cost and effort required for collecting relevant information by designing the right kind of questionnaire. Secondly, applying the QFD model to this product was difficult in terms visualisation of yields to the enhanced options; which the executives at the company had initially worried would deteriorate basically owing to growing competition. But at the end of the day, there was actually an improvement in yields. Thirdly, the management and planning tools are to be taught in a better way to the employees in the future, because the team was new to QFD and many of its tools, which led to a few teething problems. Fourthly, the project was time consuming as it stretched over a time period of three months as the corporate TQM department was required to be involved. The final problem was faced in terms of the fact that many of the steps taken were turning into learning processes as the company wanted to explore the full power of Comprehensive Service QFD with the aim of judging its applicability in context of future projects. The final conclusion is that QFD turned out to be highly beneficial to Host Marriott in terms of exponential growth, enhanced revenues and a facelift of sorts for the entire organisation and its functioning. Sources Cited: 1. Google Inc. URL: www.google.com Accessed from date 22nd August, 2006 to 25th August, 2006 2. Japan Business Consultants Ltd. URL: www.mazur.net Accessed on date 23rd August, 2006 3. QFD and Voice of Customer Analysis. Glenn Mazur, 1996. URL: http://www.mazur.net/publishe.htm Accessed on date 25th August, 2006 4. QFD Institute - The Official Source for QFD. URL: http://qfdi.org/symposium.htm Accessed on date 25th August, 2006 5. Marriottt Hotels, Resorts and Suites. Steve Lampa (Brand Executive). URL: http://www.hosthotels.com/home.asp Accessed on date 25th August, 2006 6. Kansas Com. URL: http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/15283876.htm Accessed on date 25th August, 2006 Read More