In today’s competitive business environment, delivering products and services that precisely meet customer expectations is critical. Within the SAP Quality Management (QM) framework, ensuring quality is not just about inspection and control—it starts from understanding and translating customer needs into concrete quality requirements. This is where Quality Function Deployment (QFD) plays a vital role.
QFD is a structured method used to transform customer needs (often called the “voice of the customer”) into detailed engineering and quality requirements. It systematically captures and prioritizes customer demands and aligns them with the organization’s processes, product features, and quality attributes.
Originally developed in Japan in the late 1960s, QFD helps businesses focus on what matters most to customers, reducing costly errors, improving product design, and enhancing customer satisfaction.
SAP QM is an integrated solution for managing quality across all phases of product development, procurement, production, and delivery. While SAP QM provides tools for inspection planning, quality notifications, audits, and certificates, QFD complements these by ensuring that quality requirements stem directly from the customer's voice, embedded early in product planning and design.
By integrating QFD concepts into SAP QM processes, organizations can:
QFD typically uses a matrix approach—famously the House of Quality—to connect customer demands to engineering characteristics.
Gather detailed and prioritized customer requirements through surveys, interviews, feedback, or market research. These are qualitative statements such as “fast delivery,” “easy to use,” or “durable material.”
Translate each customer need into measurable product or process characteristics. For example, “fast delivery” might relate to “order processing time” and “shipment lead time.”
Construct the House of Quality matrix within SAP QM planning or complementary tools, where:
Based on customer importance and technical difficulty, assign priorities and set measurable quality targets for each characteristic. These targets become inputs for SAP QM inspection plans and quality control checks.
Use SAP QM modules to integrate these quality requirements into inspection planning, quality notifications, and audits to ensure compliance throughout production and supply chain processes.
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a powerful approach to ensure that quality management in SAP is truly aligned with customer expectations. By systematically translating the voice of the customer into measurable quality requirements, organizations can enhance product quality, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. Integrating QFD within SAP QM transforms quality from a reactive process into a proactive, customer-driven strategy — a critical factor for business success in today’s dynamic markets.