QFD from Product Characteristics to Pre-production

In this chapter the rest of the QFD framework phases will be discussed: Product characteristics; Functions and mechanisms; Innovation; Parts, Costs and Production process; Reliability. The reader can continue developing her/his QFD project, using the exercises as a guide. The output from Preplan is the customer requests priority, also called Demanded Quality Weight. This index is used in creating the Quality Function Deployment House of Quality in order to obtain the priority of the product Quality Characteristics. Characteristics help to build the product Functions (for a bicycle, “It lights up the road ahead” or “It brakes”). Functions are weighted from both the customer and the technician’s point of view. In the QFD model, Functions then lead the team to the Mechanisms, macro-systems which carry out the product functions, for example, the “Steering mechanism” or the “Transmission mechanism” or the “Dirt protection mechanism”. After selecting either existing or new Technology that can be adopted for the new product, we establish their priority using a mechanism-technology matrix. Now Parts can be deployed with the input from technology selected and product characteristics. The team can set the Costs of the parts. Parts for the product are either made or purchased from suppliers and the final product must be assembled: Process phases can be deployed and their priority calculated. At the end an analysis of Faults is implemented, in order to find out, from the customer’s point of view, what the most serious faults that can occur are.