QFD

Introduction Customer satisfaction lies at the heart of all modern thinking on quality and business management. Many corporate mission statements set customers as the focus of an organization’s business activities, and key thinkers have defined the quality of goods and services with reference to how well they satisfy needs and expectations of the customer base (Deming, 1990; Juran, 1989). When the Boston Consulting Group and Product Development Consulting Inc. (1993) looked at competitive advantage in 600 European, Japanese and US manufacturers, they discovered that features such as product development speed, innovation in products and feel for market changes all had significant impact on market share growth. Worryingly, Cooper (1993) estimated that 46 per cent of product development resources are invested in products that either don’t get made or are not profitable in the market place.