Page 257 - Design for Six Sigma a Roadmap for Product Development

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) 227

7.8.1 QFD example highlights
The following are the highlights of the QFD example:

Project objectives. Design a global commercial process with Six
Sigma performance.
Project problem statement
■ Sales cycle time (lead generation to full customer setup) exceeds
182 business days. Internal and external customer specifications
range from 1 to 72 business days.
■ Only 54 percent of customer service requests are closed by the
commitment date. The customers expect 100 percent of their service
requests to be completed on time.
■ Nonstandard commercial processes, none of which are Six
Sigma–capable.
Business case
■ There is no consistent, global process for selling to, setting up, and
servicing accounts.
■ Current sales and customer service information management
systems do not enable measurement of accuracy and timeliness on
a global basis.
■ Enterprisewide customer care is a “must be” requirement—failure to
improve the process threatens growth and retention of the portfolio.
Project goals
■ Reduce prospecting cycle time from 16 to 5 business days.
■ Reduce discovery cycle time from 34 to 10 business days.
■ Reduce the deal-closing cycle time from 81 to 45 business days (net
of all sales metrics customer wait time).
■ Reduce setup cycle time from 51 to 12 business days.
■ Increase the percentage of service requests closed by commitment
date from 54 percent (1.6 ) to 99.97 percent (5.0 ).

7.8.2 QFD example steps
The basic QFD steps are described in the following paragraphs.

Step 1: Identify the WHATs and HOWs and their relationship. The DFSS
team identifies customers and establishes customer wants, needs,
delights, and usage profiles. Corporate, regulatory, and social require-
ments should also be identified. The value of this step is to greatly
improve the understanding and appreciation DFSS team members
have for customer, corporate, regulatory, and social requirements. The
DFSS team, at this stage, should be expanded to include market
research. A market research professional might help the black belt