گسترش کارکرد کیفیت QFD نه فقط یک ابزار بلکه یک روش مدیریت کیفیت است

mplementing QFD needs understanding of the “philosophy” behind the tool. Discrepancies ini ipoints of view and culture lead to different approaches of the methodology. Most attention in literature relates to the benefits of QFD or to the more or less “technical” aspects of the method. Mostly comments on implementation and use are mentioned quite summarily. QFD in fact is a method of continuous product improvement, emphasising the impact of organisational learning on innovation. It must not be seen as just an “ad hoc” tool for the development of a particular product neither will it lead to “perfect” products. QFD has to become part of a company's culture. From that perspective it should belong to the management process. Because of that “cultural change” we will encounter quite specific implementation problems. Implementation problems can be categorised into three groups: methodological problems, organisational problems and problems concerning product policy. Besides the problem of information gathering, the biggest problems are of an organisational nature. Characteristics of western management can limit the effectiveness of the technique. Special attention must be paid to product policy and cross-functional project approach to make this tool a valuable technological and organisational aid for innovation projects. Based on document and case studies from the USA and the Netherlands we will reflect upon differences between the Japanese and “Western” practices and resulting implementation problems. Keywords

Quality function deployment QFD is based on the concept of company wide quality control (CWQC). The CWQC philosophy is characterised by customer orientation, cross functional management and process rather than product orientation. It refers to quality of management and the quality of work being done (Japan Industrial Standard Z8101,1981). From that point of view QFD becomes a management tool to model the dynamics of the design process. The roots of Japanese CWQC are the same concepts of statistical quality control (SQC) and total quality control (TQC) as originated in the USA, but there are also fundamental differences. After World War II the quality concepts were brought over by Deming and Juran who found a keen audience among the Japanese captains of industry [1]. At that time, notably, they could communicate directly because of their knowledge of a foreign language. So the ideas of “Quality is fitness for Use” and the statistical approach were put forward top down into the company. The cultural orientation of Japan on community and social harmony became a foundation for a strong market approach based on customer orientation and product quality. Horizontally and vertically customer desires were deployed by process development and product policy. The Japanese industry became more result-oriented and achieved competitive advantages in world markets by a strategy of continuous incremental improvements, called Kaizen [2]. In many “Western” companies the influence of scientific management is still fairly strong and sometimes the executive's or engineer's ideas in product development still predominate [3]. Because of that orientation the TQC concept is too often exclusively directed to the quality of product or service and usually limited to manufacturing and assembly activities. The (former!) TQC concept is strongly efficiency oriented. A lot of American and European companies still maintain a quite strong functional organisation structure and put great emphasis on problem solving and efficiency improvement during the implementation and production stage of new products. A functional organisation structure usually leads to classical transition problems from research and development to manufacturing [2] and [3]. The Japanese are strong with respect to a philosophical tendency, intuition, tacit knowledge and community spirit. In the West, people attach high importance to logic, codified knowledge and the contribution of the individual. These cultural dissimilarities also lead to differences in the application and appreciation of QFD.

QFD is one of the improvement tools that should enable companies to achieve high quality. Tools alone however cannot provide results by themselves. They must be developed to reflect the companies’ culture and management vision. QFD is not a panacea for solving design problems nor for developing “perfect” products. It refers to “deploying” customers’ desires. It can be an excellent tool to plan and control the development process. Rather it is suited to improve process management and policy deployment by better communication and employee involvement. A problem, however, is how to get people in the company down to work to make all the pieces of QFD effective. Problems concerning the implementation can be categorised into three groups: (1) methodological problems: • the risk of going too much into details; • the risk of “falling in love” with the method (is: “mysticism of digits”); • interchanging customer and engineering requirements (change of mind); (2) organisational problems: • not enough management support (policy deployment, rewarding team dedication); • lack on process orientation (reactive use and failure to integrate); • weak cross-functional management/team building; (3) product policy: • choice of the right product (product evolution); • definition of the customer (segmentation); • market information (competitive and technical benchmarking). To implement QFD successfully a company has to be able to control the production processes at a level of obtaining an ISO certificate (process orientation). Besides the problem of market information the biggest problems are of an organisational nature. Partly, these can be avoided by bringing into action an enthusiastic facilitator and by good project management. Competition requires continuous quality improvements and innovation. In Western companies most improvements are still on project by project basis. Therefore, management has to take the leadership in stimulating step by step approaches by formulation of a clear product policy. There is a need for sound evaluation and open-minded communication within the organisation to stimulate organisational learning. That make demands on a “culture change”. Because to a large extent the mentioned implementation problems call upon a ceaseless adaptation of the organisation, it can be said “QFD is not just a tool but has to become a way of Management!”