Abstract

Worldwide competition has redefined the requirements for total product quality. Today's markets demand products that simultaneously meet customer requirements, are developed at an ever-quickening pace, and are produced at ever-decreasing costs. Achieving goals that were once conflicting demands a thorough understanding of the process of product development. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a systematized process of product development. It draws together the entire cross-functional product development team at the beginning of a project. Manufacturing, marketing, research and development, and engineering all work together to understand the customers' wants expressed in the customers' language. The team then uses a matrix approach to correlate the customers' wants with how the new product will meet these wants. This simple, though at times tedious, process forces cross-functional groups to communicate during product creation. In formulating the product definition, we have considered performance, manufacturability, critical components and tolerances, and, most important, the customers' requirements.

© 1990 Optical Society of America