STUDY AND ANALYSIS OF QFD IN AUTO-PARTS MANUFACTURING COMPANY

Abstract

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a systematic technique to translate customer needs into the technical characteristics of a product or service. The competitiveness of the product in the market is dependent on how much a product reflects the needs/requirements of the customer. QFD is a structured process, a visual language, and a set of inter-linked engineering and management charts. It establishes customer value using the voice of the customer and transforms that value into design, production, and manufacturing process characteristics. This study presents the implementation of QFD in ABC Company where steering are manufactured. Users had faced problems with current design of the steering so the company has decide to come up with design of the steering which incorporates the needs of customer so as to have lesser field problems. Hence the voices/image of the customers for a good steering were collected and converted into customer requirements (WHATS). Kano questionnaire was used to prioritize the requirements of the customer. Then engineering characteristics or technical descriptors (HOWS) were determined in such a way that technical descriptors helps in achieving/fulfilling one or more customer requirement. These WHATS & HOWS were placed in the house of quality to obtain relation between them and know how they affect each other. On the basis of customer requirements customer competitive assessment of current product was done with respect to the competitors. Similarly on the basis of technical descriptors current product was compared with the competitors so as to find where the improvement is required. Prioritized customer requirements and prioritized technical descriptors were developed for WHATS & HOWS respectively. On the basis of outcome from the house of quality various modifications for steering design are suggested so as to make the steering more competitive in the market & to have lesser complaints from user end. This will help the company to improve the quality of steering. As far as limitations of study are concerned, more customer requirements could have been placed in the house of quality to get more improved steering system, number of customer complaints row could have been used to get weakness of the product as per technical parameters. This QFD technique can be implemented for process planning and production planning phase in future which would further reduce overall cycle time required to the manufacture the product.