Quality function deployment in product design and an application of QFD in the construction sector

Quality must be designed into the product, not inspected into it. Quality can be defined as meeting customer requirements and providing superior value. This focus on the customer places an emphasis on techniques such as Quality Function Deployment to help understand customer needs and provide superior value. KFA is a method for structured product planning and development that enables a development team to specify clearly the customer's wants and needs, and then to evaulate each proposed product or service capability systematically in terms of its impact on meeting those needs. The KFA process involves constructing one or more matrices. The first of these matrices is called the "House of Quality". The matrix consists of several sections or submatrices joined together in various ways, each containing information related to the others. The structure of this methodology helps development personnel understand essential requirements, internal capabilities, and constraints and design the product so that everything is in place to achieve the desired a satisfied customer. KFA helps development personnel maintain a correct focus on true requirements and minimizes misinterpreting customer needs. As a result, KFA is an effective communications and a quality planning tool. In the first section of the thesis, the importance of the KFA in a new product design is argued while several project models that used KFA in a successful way are introduced. In the second section, the formation of; product planning, parts planning and process cycle matrices together with the related examples about the concept are discussed.183 Third section introduces the quality studies in the construction sector that will be used as the sample case sector in the thesis. The failures and difficulties in the quality application of construction sector and the utilities of the quality studies for the construction sector are discussed in this section. In the last section, the sample firm using the KFA system in residence construction is described.