The Customer-Driven Company: Managerial Perspectives on Quality Function Deployment

Synopsis

The companies that are surviving and thriving in today's competitive global arena are those that most quickly respond to the ever-changing voice of the customer: they are customer-driven. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is an essential ingredient of the customer-driven company as it can reduce time-to-market, cut total costs, and encourage the development and delivery of high-quality, customer-satisfying products and services. The Customer-Driven Company provides an easy-to-read overview of QFD for today's busy manager. You'll learn what QFD is, involves, and accomplishes; how, where, and when QFD can best be utilized; and what today's QFD pioneers think and have learned about the methodology. This expanded and updated edition also contains current material that reflects five solid years of QFD growth and application as well as a new chapter entitled "Customizing Your House," which features advanced aspects of QFD, five sample QFD applications, and eight basic steps to QFD implementation. Complete with a comprehensive QFD glossary and a guide to additional QFD additional resources, The Customer-Driven Company provides an excellent point from which to launch QFD training and hands-on application. You'll discover how to use QFD to: translate customer and market requirements into company requirements at each stage of the product- or service-development cycle from research and development to engineering, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and distribution; enhance the performance of other improvement tools and methodologies including Total Quality Management, Statistical Process Control, Taguchi Methods, and others; and correct the inefficiencies that result in unmet customer needs. In the face of intense global competition, shrinking markets, and higher customer demands, the need for a time-saving, cost-reducing, and quality-enhancing tool like Quality Function Deployment has never been greater. The Customer Driven Company is your key to understanding how to cover

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a powerful tool that helps companies identify and meet customer needs and produce quality- and cost-driven products. The authors show why QFD is needed and how it can be incorporated into any company, regardless of product line, service, or business environment. This easy-to-understand, revised guide gives readers a complete introduction to QFD and how it can prevent design details from being overlooked in the rush to get products to market.