ABSTRACT
This chapter describes quality function deployment (QFD), perhaps the most powerful source of such information for Design Review (DR). QFD is an objective method for ensuring quality from the earliest stages of product development. The aim is to create a product that will fully satisfy users by relating their requirements to design characteristics all the way downstream to production. The QFD table organizes and categorizes customer requirements for quality planning and then converts these requirements into design quality characteristics. Reliability deployment uses design failure mode and effects analysis to assess product reliability. Both DR and QFD are systematic methods of ensuring quality at every stage of product development. QFD involves the concept of critical characteristics. The data packages that DR participants receive in advance contain the various quality tables. The issue of technical bottlenecks is certainly relevant to achieving the desired quality characteristics, but it is also worth re-examining failure modes to identify technical obstacles to reliability targets.
