How to make a success of quality function deployment

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a technique that was developed in Japan to match product design against the needs and wants (in terms of quality and function) of the customer. The successful use of QFD depends both on the cooperation of the software development team, and on an understanding of how to tackle some of the problems involved. This paper suggests some practical ways in which to make QFD work, including a way to estimate the time to develop a matrix, and how to reduce this time. The paper is divided into three sections: planning for QFD; putting customer wants and needs into context; and deploying QFD into a product design