National Journal of System and Information Technology

Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Subscription Access
Open Access Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Restricted Access Subscription Access

A Futuristic Software Framework to Generate Actual Customer Needs for Quality Function Deployment


     

   Subscribe/Renew Journal


Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a product development process that encompasses a sheer amount of data gathered from customers through several market research techniques like personal interview, focus groups, surveys, video conferencing etc. This massive, unsorted and unstructured data is required to be transformed into a limited number of structured information to represent the actual 'Customer Needs'. However the process is tedious and time consuming and cannot be dealt with manually. In order to address these issues, this paper proposes a futuristic software framework based on an Affinity Process. The paper begins with the topic introduction and outlines the QFD process. The paper then describes the Affinity Process, builds the data structure and then makes an attempt to build the proposed framework using tools Visual Basic (VB) and MSAccess. The proposed framework is developed as a part of QFD software and it is anticipated that when completely developed, it would act as a vital component of QFD software.

Keywords

QFD, Affinity Process, Visual Basic, MS-Access, Software, Customer Needs
Subscription Login to verify subscription
User
Notifications
Font Size


  • Ahmad, M.A. and Wei, L.K. (2006) Development of essol-v2 for engineering survey calculations, International Journal of Engineering and Technology, Vol. 3, No.1, 2006, pp. 54-60.

  • Cohen, L. (1995) Quality Function Deployment: How to make QFD work for you, J W Wesner (Ed) Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

  • Day, R.G. (1993) Using Quality Function Deployment in the Product Development Process, Journal of Applied Manufacturing Systems, 1993.

  • Govers, C. P.M. (1996) What and how about Quality Function Deployment (QFD, International Journal of Production Economics, Vols. 46-47, pp. 575-585.

  • Griffin, A. Evaluating QFD’s use in U.S. firms as a process for developing products, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Michigan, USA, 1992.

  • Hassan, A.B., Abolarin, M. S. and Jimoh, O. H. (2006) The Application of Visual Basic Computer Programming Language to Simulate Numerical Iterations, Leonardo Journal of Sciences, Issue 9, pp. 125-136.

  • Hauser, J. R. and Clausing, D. P. (1988) The House of Quality, Harvard Business Review, Vol.66, (5/6) pp. 63-73.

  • King, B. (1989) ‘Better designs in half the time - Implementing QFD: Quality Function Deployment in America’, 3rd Ed Methuen MA: GOAL/QPC.

  • Li, D. (2006) Design and implementation for wound measurement application, Primary Intention; 14(2): 56-58, 60-63, 66.

  • Mizuno, S. (1988) Company-Wide Total Quality Control, Asian. Productivity Press, Cambridge.

  • Sharma, A.K., Mehta, I.C. and Sharma, J.R. (2009) Development of Fuzzy Integrated Quality Function Deployment Software – A Conceptual Analysis, I-Manager’s Journal on Software Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 16-24, 2009.

  • Sharma, A.K., Mehta, I.C. and Sharma, J.R., Analyzing Programming Tools for the Development of Quality Function Deployment Software, International Journal of Information and Decision Sciences, Inderscience Publishers, Accepted.

  • Sharma, J.R., Bamnote, A.J. and Shrivastava, R.L. (2003), ‘Understanding quality function deployment - A TQM tool to quantify customers needs’, National conference on world class manufacturing, Coimbatore.

  • Siliconfareast.com, Affinity Diagram, [WWW document] http://www.siliconfareast.com/affinity.htm (accessed 03rd April 2009).

  • Skymark.com, Affinity Diagram, [WWW document] http://www.skymark.com/resources/tools/affinity_diagram.asp (accessed 04th April 2009).

  • Sullivan, L.P. (1988) Policy management through QFD, Quality Progress, Vol. 21, No. 6, 1988.

  • Syque.com, Quality Tools: Affinity Diagram Examples, [WWW document] http://syque.com/quality_tools/toolbook/Affinity/example.htm (accessed 25th Nov 2009).

  • Terninko, J. (1995) Step by Step: Customer Driven Product Design, Nottingham, New Hampshire, USA


Abstract Views: 551

PDF Views: 1




  • A Futuristic Software Framework to Generate Actual Customer Needs for Quality Function Deployment

Abstract Views: 551  |  PDF Views: 1

Authors

Abstract


Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a product development process that encompasses a sheer amount of data gathered from customers through several market research techniques like personal interview, focus groups, surveys, video conferencing etc. This massive, unsorted and unstructured data is required to be transformed into a limited number of structured information to represent the actual 'Customer Needs'. However the process is tedious and time consuming and cannot be dealt with manually. In order to address these issues, this paper proposes a futuristic software framework based on an Affinity Process. The paper begins with the topic introduction and outlines the QFD process. The paper then describes the Affinity Process, builds the data structure and then makes an attempt to build the proposed framework using tools Visual Basic (VB) and MSAccess. The proposed framework is developed as a part of QFD software and it is anticipated that when completely developed, it would act as a vital component of QFD software.

Keywords


QFD, Affinity Process, Visual Basic, MS-Access, Software, Customer Needs

References