Date sent:        Wed, 10 Apr 1996 17:29:52 -0700
From:             Kevin Brennan <nemesis@provider.co.uk>
To:               lovkraft@hvision.nl
Copies to:        nemesis@provider.co.uk
Subject:          Marketing Dynamics

Quality & Marketing Dynamics for Food Manufacturing




Building in the Voice of the Customer.
(Quality Functional Deployment.)




Submitted By
Nemesis











In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of :
BA(Ordinary) Food Marketing


Mark recieved 57%




Lancaster University



25-03-94





Building in the Voice of the Customer.

 The first understanding of "building in the voice of the customer" for the manufacturer, 
 are you producing a product that the consumer feels satisfied with?  Within so many
 products there are sometimes so many misunderstandings because the customer and the product
 development teams speak completely different languages.  For example a customer may state
 they would like a car that is easy to start, this interpretation to the engineers is the
 production of a car that starts within 10 seconds of continuous cranking.   Another example
 could be the customer wants a "soap leaves the skin soft"  this must be translated into pH
 or hardness specifications for the bar of soap.(	Evans 1993 )  By the incorrect translation
 within the organisations  different departments, the customers' requirements can become
 irreclaimable and lost forever. The Japanese developed the concept of quality functional
 deployment (QFD) to hopefully ensure that all customer requirements were discovered
 throughout the stages of  design process  and also in the area of design of production
 systems.  QFD is fundamentally a philosophy and is driven by an arrangement of planning and
 communication tools that is aimed totally to the customer needs and requirements, this is
 done by co-ordination  within the design, the manufacturing and marketing of goods. QFD
 originated in 1972 at Mitsubishi's Kobe shipyard site, Toyota then took over the
 development of QFD.  QFD is now used successfully world-wide by manufacturers of
 electronics, appliances, clothing, construction equipment and by firms such as General
 Motors, Ford, Mazda, Motorola, Xerox, Kodak, IBM, Proctor & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, and
 AT&T  ( Evans 1993 ) Within a critical  level, QFD offers the incentive and opportunity for
 senior management to release themselves from the traditional hierarchy and narrow-minded
 attitude on "results" ,which are only measurable at the completion of the sale, though with
 the implementation of QFD the broader-minded process is of how to focus on how the results
 are obtained Before we  identify the voice of the customer the organisation will move away
 from the more traditional approach of it's departments such as product planning, design
 teams, research and development tested, refined and marketed.  If the consumers needs can
 be correctly identified  first time, then such wasteful re-engineering will be eliminated. 
 This is the initial philosophy of Quality Functional Deployment. One of the major benefits
 of QFD is improved communication and teamwork between all constituencies in the production
 process, such as between marketing and design, design and manufacturing, purchasing and
 suppliers etc.  Product objectives are not misunderstood or mis- interpatated during the
 production process. QFD helps to determine the causes of customer dissatisfaction, and is a
 useful tool for competitive analysis of product quality by top management.  ( Evans 1993 ) 
 This  definitely allows the organisation to bring new products onto the market sooner and
 will confidently help the organisation to gain the competitive edge.
  The customers requirements is called simply voice of the customer, these can be catalogued
  into the following areas customer needs, satisfies, exciters delighters and dissatifiers.
 A set of matrixes are used to relate to the voice of the customer to counterpart
 characteristic requirements when they are expressed as technical specifications and process
 control requirements.  There are four principle planning documents.

Customer requirements planning matrix.  This translates the voice of the customer into
counterpart characteristics of the final product

Product characteristic deployment.  This translates counterpart characteristic of the final
product into critical component characteristics.

Process plan and quality control charts.  The document identifies critical process and
product parameters and control points of each.

Operating instructions.  This identifies operations to be performed by plant personnel to
assure that important parameters are achieved.

 This matrix is the  fundamental contents of the QFD inspiration. Within the configuration
 of the matrixes it is often defined as "the house of quality" because of its shape.  The
 house of quality relates customer attributes to the counterpart characteristics to ensure
 that any engineering decision  has a basis of meeting a customer need.  (Dale & Plunckett
 1990  )

To build the house of quality within the organisation,  it consists of completing six steps.
(See Appendix 1)

1.	Identify customer attributes.
2.	Identify counterpart characteristics.
3.	Relate the customer attributes to the counterpart characteristics.
4.	Conduct an evaluation of competing products.
5.	Evaluate counterpart characteristics and develop targets.
6.	Determine which counterpart characteristics to deploy in the remainder of the production
process.

 The customers attributes are the product requirements that are desired by the customer, to
 obtain this information then the organisation could carry out market research or direct
 surveys to buyers asking for information on their needs and satisfaction rates with the
 product.  Questions such as "Why does he or she buy the product ? and Does he or she buy
 the product? are important means of identifying customer attributes. ( Evans 1993 )  
 Information about customer attributes does not come from one source, sales staff have the
 direct knowledge on what the desires of the customer are.  Maintenance technicians also
 have valued information as the customer will enquire why the product has broken down.  (See
 Appendix 2) Counterpart characteristics are explained to be for the design and engineering
 teams and personify the technical characteristics that must be deployed over the design and
 manufacturing and service process.  They need to be calculable as the expenditure will be
 controlled and then compared to the desired targets.
   The example that has been within this essay is for the production of textbooks.  There
   are many different technical characteristics the publisher has to consider, these could
   include areas such as how much research literature to cite, the amount of popular
   literature to reference, the number of numerical exercises, the number of open-ended
   exercises, amount of figures, colour, correctness of grammar etc. ( Evans 1993)  The roof
   of the house of quality shows the interrelationships between any counterpart
   characteristics (See Appendix 3 ).  Particular symbols are used to distinguish very
   strong relationships, strong relationships and weak relationships.
 Customer attributes are collated  down the left side of the house of quality and counter
 characteristics are gathered across the top, as stated earlier we use the character symbols
 to identify the relationships similar to the roof of the house of quality.  The purpose of
 this matrix is to examine if the final counterpart characteristics adequately covers the
 customer attributes.  Counterpart characteristics can effect several customer attributes. 
 The lack of a strong relationship between the customer attribute and any counterpart
 characteristic shows that the attributes are not addressed or that the final product will
 have difficulty in meeting customer needs. (Dale1992)  (see Appendix 4) This part of the 
 house of quality focuses on the importance of  identifying each customer attribute and
 successfully evaluating existing products for each of the organisations attributes. 
 Customer importance ratings portray the areas of the greatest interest and the highest
 expectations, that are expressed by the customer.  Competitive evaluation helps to
 highlight the critical strengths and weaknesses in competing products.  This enables the
 organisation to quest for opportunities to make improvements.  This also  links  QFD to the
 organisations strategic vision, which will allow priorities to be taken up within the
 design process. (See Appendix 5) The evaluation of counterpart characteristics of
 competitive products can usually be accomplished  through internal evaluation and then
 translated into more measurable terms.  These evaluations can be collated with the
 evaluation of the customer attributes which will determine any inconsistency between
 customer evaluations and technical evaluations.  For example if a competing product is
 found to best satisfy a customer attribute but the evaluation of the related counterpart
 characteristics indicated otherwise, then either the measures used are faulty or  the
 product has an image difference (either positive toward the competitor or negative toward
 our product) this is affecting customer perceptions.  ( Evans 1993)  Within the basis of
 customer importance ratings and the existing products strengths and weaknesses  (See
 Appendix 6) The selection of counterpart characteristics that must be deployed for the
 remainder of the process, this is of vital importance as we  must identify the
 characteristics that have strong relationships to the customer needs, though have poor
 competitive performance, or are selling strong points.  These characteristics will have to
 be assembled into a language of its own function within the design and production process
 so that correct performance and controls can be adapted to ensure that the voice of the
 customer is maintained. (See Appendix  6)

 If Quality Functional Deployment  (QFD) is used correctly it can ensure discipline within
 the multi-skilled teams concerning structure and conformance to regulated time scales.  QFD
 also thrives on team attitude, and ensures organisation recognition towards customer needs
 and satisfiers.  As they prioritise the customer needs, the customer only gets, what the
 customer pays for. With the use of QFD  there will be constant communication throughout the
 organisation, so all aspects of customer quality is catered for.  By the use of QFD, the
 organisation will achieve direct problem avoidance which can give the right organisation
 the superior marketing edge.



Appendix 1
The House of Quality.











Appendix 2

The Voice of the Customer


Appendix 3

Counterpart Characteristics.

Appendix 4

Relationship matrix.


Appendix 5

Comparative Evaluation

Appendix 6

Completed House of Quality.




BIBLIOGRAPHY



Evans, J. R 		(1993)  The Management & Control of Quality;   
     Lindsey  2nd edition

Jankowicz, AD ,	(1991) 'Business research projects for students', Chapman Hall.



The Good Study Guide.(1990) North ledge. Open University										

Laurie. J. Mullens	(1993)  Management and Organisation Behaviour.
    3rd Edition. Pitman Publishers


Sekaran, U. 		(1992) 'Research methods for business .  2nd Edition, John 										Wiley &
Sons Inc.


