Previous sections discussed how voice of customer can be converted into business deliverables in healthcare lean Six Sigma projects.  The two potential ways are using of CTQ tree and Quality Functional Deployment.

QFD is a very popular tool developed in Japan.  Is is also called House of Quality.  The name comes from the appearance of the QFD.

QFD has one part of the diagram which can be called for VOC.  In this vertical column, each row has VOC listed.  Next to each of the VOC, a rating of VOC is provided.  The ratings are generally performed on the scale of 1 to 5.  It is important to note that many variables can have same ratings.  The idea is to make users tell you their priority if it comes down to choice of one need versus the other.  So there is no reason to expect each need to have different rating as then it becomes ranking.  Neither is there any reason to rate everything same as it then defeats the purpose.

Our typical experience is when pushed, many time, marketing organization tend to take the path of rating everything high.  The best way to explain to them is that these discussions are not to say that low rated needs will not be addressed.  It is to focus on total deliverables and commit resources for the biggest opportunities.  QFD is a dynamic document.  It can be revised during the project.  In addition, generally the decision to work on meeting a customer demand is purely business decision which needs to go through business case, IRR, etc calculations, separately.

Once the VOC is listed with its ratings, next step is draw another block, perpendicular to the VOC Column.  This row will have several columns.  For each of the customer needs, business needs to identify what product features can be used to meet the customer demand.  In other words, HOW are we going to fulfill the needs of WHAT they (customers) want.

With What and How identified, next step is to create the third block.  The third block is a grid created with What and How.  For each possible combinations of What and How (customer needs and product features), there is one cell.  Each of the Whats are related to each of the Hows.  The relationship is generally created at 4 levels.  These cases are of no relationship which gets zero score, weak dependency relationship which gets score of one, medium relationship which gets the score of four and strong relationship gets a score of nine.

A team of people discuss to fill out the grids.  Each of the customer needs are connected with each of the company objectives with one of those possible relationship scores of zero, one, four, or nine.  A weighted score for each of the Hows is created by multiplying the cells in the respective column with the corresponding VOC ranks and summing up the products for each VOCs.  In other words, it is the cumulative sum of the cells for a given business deliverable with the corresponding VOC rating. This provides a score for each of the Hows which provides a great insight into each of Hows contribution in meeting customer demands.

The cells are filled with numbers like 0, 1, 4, and 9.  Since QFD is subjective, it is quite often difficult to show any significant difference in various HOW scores.  The idea of using these non-linear numbers is to amplify the importance.  The important items become more important.  In typical rating, we tend to use the numbers 0,1,2,3.  Note that the bumbers used are square of these numbers.

Another block in the QFD is called competitor analysis.  This block is to the right side of of the grid.  The competitors performance is ranked with respect to each VOCs and compared with the internal business performance.

This comparison also facilitates the business in making a decision in investment on the right VOC.   For example, if a business is already exceeding its competitors in a certain aspect of VOC, it may not need to provide any further resources to improve the performance of that particular VOC.  It will not help create any competitive advantage in the near term.  This might change if the business intelligence indicates that the competition is soon going to improve the performance to significant degree and thus taking away the competitive edge.

Typically the QFDs have further houses which converts these hows to product features to manufacturing technology and then manufacturing technology to productions.  However, in practice, these additional houses of quality are rarely used.

QFD provides an organized approach to compiling and interpreting market needs, competition landscape, and guiding businesses in decision making process.  It is an early subjective analysis tool and should be treated as such.

Note: In future dates, pictorial illustration will be added to make it more user friendly.

About the Author:  Dr. R.K. “ravi” Pandey has years of experience in business and business process transformation, strategy, and Lean Six Sigma.  Ravi currently serves as the President of BIPRO Inc., a leading provider of services for improvement in healthcare busines.