Quality function deployment: Integrating comprehensive matrix and SWOT analysis for effective decision making

Abstract

In this ever-changing business scenario, the manufacturing product industries have to be in position to rec-ognize the ever changing pulse and demands of the market. Customer satisfaction and quality management has become a strategic issue for companies in the new millennium. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) lit-erature suggests that building up the House of Quality (HoQ) is not a difficult task, however to analyze and in-terpret the information available is replete with a lot of uncertainty and presents less than optimal solutions. This paper attempts to address these twin issues of the Post-HoQ analysis and its interpretation through SWOT. The development and mechanics of QFD model is presumed to be known to the followers and the paper deals specifically with post-HoQ model through a well-defined and structured approach to comprehen-sive matrix analysis. The paper contributes a method for evaluating and analyzing the customer data and tech-nical data in QFD as a function of the generation of useful information resulting in a better decision making process. The outcome of the study is a comprehensive solution which discusses post-matrix analysis through underlying concepts; requisite steps; information needed; and the computations involved. The applicability of the proposed model is demonstrated with an illustrative hypothetical example of a medical-care product - dis-posable syringe and needle.