Page 149 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)

124 Chapter Six

Step 2: Determine Quality Characteristics (Hows)
Quality characteristics are extremely important, so the Yaesu Book Center
QC circle made a great effort to identify them. A partial list of quality char-
acteristics is given in Fig. 6.11. A three-level hierarchy of quality charac-
teristics was used.

Step 3: Assign Degree of Importance to Customer Attributes
The survey questionnaire given in Table 6.1 is used to collect customer
importance ratings for each customer attribute. It serves as a basis for
determining importance ratings in the QFD study.

Step 4: Determine Operation Items
In this case, operation items are what bookstore management and employees
are actually doing in their work. Eventually, the QFD study should provide
guidelines as to which operation, items were not done enough before and
how much effort should go into doing them now. These operation items are
organized in a tree diagram and illustrated in Fig. 6.12.

Step 5: Two-phase QFD Analysis for the Yaesu Book Center

Based on the work in the first four steps, two QFD house of quality charts were
developed for the Yaesu Book Center. The first house of quality chart relates
customer attributes to quality characteristics; the second house of quality chart
relates quality characteristics to operations items. The partial listings of these
two houses of quality are illustrated in Figs. 6.13 and 6.14.

Pleasant
First level Fast
atmosphere
Product Product
Second level Service
arrangement knowledge

Compliance rate Degree of looking for missing books training plan

Third level Time required to deliver books to the store Number of books that got dirty Progress in job Number of master fire drills

Figure 6.11 Quality Characteristics (Hows)