3.2. TRADITIONAL QFDS

A traditional QFD, taught in most classes on Six Sigma, is likely to be one of the following.

The first is a QFD consisting of four forms. The first form is the "House of Quality." This form covers product planning and competitor benchmarking. The second form is Part Deployment, which shows key part characteristics. The third form shows Critical-to-Customer Process Operations. The fourth is Production Planning.

Two other QFDs are the "Matrix of Matrices" QFD, consisting of 30 matrices, and the "Designer's Dozen," consisting of 12 QFD matrices.

Needless to say, these other QFDs take much more time and effort than the simplified QFD. Meetings to complete the traditional QFDs generally take at least four times as long as the meetings required for the simplified QFD on an equivalent project.

Are the traditional QFDs worth the extra effort versus the simplified QFD? Perhaps so on very large and very complex programs. However, the benefit of being able to use the simplified QFD on every project or change, which is not realistic with the more complex QFDs, gives it a decided advantage. The customers' inputs are needed on all levels of projects!

The major benefit of any QFD comes from getting the input of everyone affected. If the form is too complex or the meeting to do the form is too long, people lose focus, their eyes begin to blur, and the quality of the input diminishes. The simplified QFD is designed to get needed input with the minimum of hassle! Simplified QFD meetings are often only two or three hours long.