Quality Function Deployment – Pros & Cons

Through a study (a MBA thesis about QFD Implementation at a famous FMCG company, Binh Duong province, VN), some pros and cons of QFD have been identified as below:

PROs:

· Improve product quality by focusing on satisfying customers’ requirements throughout the product development process.

· Improve the communication channels between customers, marketing, research & development, quality and production departments which support better decision making process of each function.

· Reduce new product development project time and cost

· Be able to predict and have quicker reacts to market changes, evolutions.

CONs:

· The relationship matrix (mainly HOQ) will be too complicated with many process inputs and/or many customer requirements.

· It is very difficult and costly to implement with a large relationship matrix.

· The quantitative method for relationships assessment is not clear and not in a systematic way, mainly bases on objective quantitative assessments of the QFD team.