How to use the House of Quality template
Let’s walk through the process of putting together a House of Quality using a QFD example for a company building a new smartphone.
1. Add customer needs and ratings
On the left side of the House of Quality, you’ll enter the most important customer needs based on your research. For instance, in this House of Quality example, customers care about the following qualities when shopping for a smartphone:
- Size
- Weight
- Easy to use
- Reliable
- Cheap
- Big screen
- Long-lasting battery
- High-quality camera
Next to the customer needs you have listed, rate how important each requirement is on a scale of 1 to 5. Customers may rate several traits of high importance, so it’s okay to have multiple 5s or multiple 4s. Ratings don’t have to be whole numbers either.
To the right, you’ll calculate the percent of customer importance rating for each requirement. Take the rating given to a requirement (1 to 5) divided by the total of all ratings.
2. List design requirements
Horizontally above the relationship matrix, you’ll add design requirements for the product, such as weight, cost of production, and operating system.
3. Weigh the relationship between customer needs and design requirements
In the relationship matrix, you’ll identify how strongly each of the design parameters affects the customer need. Use the following symbols:
As an example, if customers would like a less expensive smartphone, the cost of production will strongly contribute to the price. The operating system, battery, and glass used in the product will also affect the overall cost to customers, but not as strongly.
Once you have filled the relationship matrix, you can add the importance rating and percent of importance for each design requirement. To calculate the importance rating, multiply the percent of importance rating with the relationship score for each customer need. (In our House of Quality example, “size” has a 4% customer importance rating and a 9 relationship score, so the total would be 0.36.) Add those totals together for the importance rating.
After you calculate all the importance ratings, you can take each rating divided by the total for your percentages. The requirements with the highest importance ratings or percentages are likely the features that your company should prioritize or invest in more.
4. Complete the correlation matrix
The correlation matrix will determine how design requirements help and hinder each other.
Above each design requirement, you’ll mark whether it’s better for the feature to be lower (down arrow) or higher (up arrow). For example, it would be preferable for the weight of a smartphone to be lower, so the example includes a down arrow. On the other hand, it would be preferable for the battery to be higher (last longer), so the House of Quality example includes an up arrow. These ratings are up for interpretation.
Based on these up-and-down symbols, you’ll determine the correlation between different design requirements. Use the correlation matrix legend to designate these relationships using the appropriate symbol (placed in the square between two features).
For example, the operating system will greatly affect the expected life of the smartphone. Since both have up arrows, the two features have a strong positive correlation.
5. Add competitor research
Finally, the competitive assessment shows how companies currently rank for each of your customers’ needs so you can determine what has been overlooked and how you can gain an advantage over your competition.
The correlation matrix and competitor research do not affect the importance ratings, but they do provide additional insight to help you weigh which customer needs and design requirements matter most.
That’s it! Your QFD House of Quality is now complete. This will be your guiding matrix for determining what your product absolutely must have to appeal to your customers’ needs and wants. It will also be a useful tool in documenting the Voice of the Customer and keeping all processes on track throughout production.
Why do teams use QFD?
QFD and the House of Quality might seem like a lot of work, but QFD is a good option if any of the following apply to your business:
- Customer satisfaction is a main goal for your organization.
- There have been delays in development.
- There is poor interdepartmental communication about customer needs.
- Product and process decisions have not had clear guidelines.
- There is no clear, documented product definition.
- You are entering a new market.
- The product is not performing as well as it had been expected to.
- The product is becoming a commodity or people already view it as a commodity.
- You have more than one customer with differing needs.
Consider, too, that the longer it takes to develop a product and bring it to market, the more resources are invested in development. It is only a benefit to your organization to make the development process faster and more efficient.
