Quality Function

Quality Function Deployment is when you meet the needs of a customer's voice and give them the output they want which is best operated through tradeoffs with other companies and creating a new product that fits the customer's needs. An example and research of the Quality Function Deployment I found was on 'Bagel Sales Doubled At Host Mariott. The example in this article talks about the QFD they used to be one of the leading successors bringing in "1.2 billion in sales a year in 170 locations worldwide." The approach they used to be successful was "first placing the product at the lowest price possible to drive penny profit but also receiving free equipment from various vendors." The author also discusses various models such as the Kato Model to describe the customer's overall satisfaction and fulfillment and how it's very important to know which customer's to serve and how to please them. The reason that Host Mariott was able to succeed and boost up their sales were they were able to figure out what customer's liked and receiving feedback and then enhancing their market through product development. The author talks about how important it is to get different market segments within different customers what they like, what they don't like, and finding a product that is efficient that benefits the needs of the customers. The author also mentions how task development is important to create newly developed products such as "person responsible, timing, training, location, equipment, skills of training, performance, self inspection, and when these techniques are followed it can meet the maximum potential customer benefits within the market." From this I learned that it is important to understand the customer needs because the more customers you can make happy the more output and sales growth will occur in the market through market trends and to better serve the function of the customers within a product.