Quality Function Deployment for Innovative Products: Incorporating Market Dynamics

Book chapter, 2012

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has been known as one of the most popular tools for customer-focused product or service design. However, its use in developing innovative products seems to be quite limited. This chapter describes why and how QFD may be considered as a potential tool in developing innovative products with respect to the recent increasingly fast change in the market. An example of market dynamics is shown using commercial specifications of a specific cell-phone market segment over a two-year period. How such dynamics can be taken into account in the house of quality will be explained along with the possible methods and tools. Finally, the extent to which the enhanced QFD might be useful in developing innovative products will be discussed using the innovation adoption curve.