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354 Chapter 10

The House of Quality Method
The house of quality was originally developed to show the connections between true
quality, quality characteristics, and process characteristics. This was done using the
fi shbone diagram, with true quality in the heads and quality and process characteris-
tics in the bones. In 1988, Hauser and Clausing developed an evaluation matrix metric
that measures how customer needs are linked to business processes and internal deci-
sions of an organization. A simplifi ed matrix is shown in fi gure 10.3 .
This technique is also referred to as quality function deployment (QFD; Mazur
1993 ) as it links the needs of the customer with marketing, design, development,
engineering, manufacturing, and service functions (see also the Quality Function
Deployment Institute, http://www.qfdi.org). It can be used for service and software
products, as well.
As shown in fi gure 10.3 , the house of quality has, as its key elements, desired out-
comes, priorities attached to these outcomes, and appropriate metrics for each outcome.
The overwhelming focus of the house of quality is on maximizing customer satisfac-
tion as measured by metrics such as repeat business and market share. It focuses on

Relationships

Metrics for performance Workgroup
performance

Importance of
Outcomes issues
being measured

Correlations Workgroup’s
knowledge,
related goals
Benchmark values
Goals and values
Ranked issues
Desired results

Figure 10.3
High-level house of quality matrix