Cost engineering with quality function deployment

Conventional Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is technically one-sided. Prioritization of technical attributes, if carried out at all, attempts to maximize customer satisfaction without considering the costs incurred. However, product design is usually a techno-economic process, hence there is always a tradeoff between quality goals and limited budgets. Based on a prioritization method suggested by Wasserman [1], this paper integrates design costs into the QFD framework. This proposed approach enables designers to optimize product development resources towards customer satisfaction and conduct analytical investigations to facilitate decision making in product design and development.