Page 331 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

318 C o n t i n u o u s I m p r o v e m e n t A n a l y z e S t a g e 319

Data Collection and Review of Customer Expectations, Needs,
Requirements, and Specifications
Another approach to QFD is based on work done by Yoji Akao. Akao
(1990, pp. 7–8) presents the following 11-step plan for developing the
quality plan and quality design, using QFD.

1. First, survey both the expressed and latent quality demands of con-
sumers in your target marketplace. Then decide what kinds of
“things” to make.
2. Study the other important characteristics of your target market
and make a demanded quality function deployment chart that
reflects both the demands and characteristics of that market.
3. Conduct an analysis of competing products on the market, which
we call a competitive analysis. Develop a quality plan and deter-
mine the selling features (sales points).
4. Determine the degree of importance of each demanded quality.
5. List the quality elements and make a quality elements deployment
chart.
6. Make a quality chart by combining the demanded quality deploy-
ment chart and the quality elements deployment chart.
7. Conduct an analysis of competing products to see how other com-
panies perform in relation to each of these quality elements.
8. Analyze customer complaints.
9. Determine the most important quality elements as indicated by
customer quality demands and complaints.
10. Determine the specific design quality by studying the quality
characteristics and converting them into quality elements.
11. Determine the quality assurance method and the test methods.

Cause-and-Effect Diagrams
Process improvement involves taking action on the causes of variation.
With most practical applications the number of possible causes for any
given problem can be huge. Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa developed a simple
method of graphically displaying the causes of any given quality prob-
lem. His method is known by several names: the Ishikawa diagram, the
fishbone diagram, and the cause-and-effect diagram.
Cause-and-effect diagrams are tools that are used to organize and
graphi cally display all of the knowledge a group has brainstormed related
to a particular problem. The brainstormed ideas are categorized into
rational categories and subcategories. The cause-and-effect diagram is
drawn to depict the relationships of the data in each category and each of
its subcategories.

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