MIT Sloan Management Review

Marketing

 

How Puritan-Bennett Used the House of Quality

By John R. Hauser

April 15, 1993

MANAGERS DON’T NEED ANY MORE VAGUE ADVICE ABOUT PAYING BETTER ATTENTION TO CUSTOMERS. THEY NEED THE PRACTICAL, STEP-BY-STEP METHODS described in this article. In 1990, a medical equipment manufacturer needed to redesign one of its products to beat an aggressive competitor. It used a method called the “House of Quality,” which relates market research information directly to product design, thereby helping the company focus effectively on the most important product benefits. The new design revolutionized the product and was a phenomenal success. Here’s how the company did it.

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In 1988, Don Clausing and I wrote an article on the “House of Quality,” a product development technique that had long been used in Japan and that was gaining popularity in the United States.1 Since then, over a hundred U.S. firms have adopted the technique for part or all of their product development activities. The House of Quality method, which is a part of Quality Function Deployment (QFD), has evolved through use. The formal charting techniques have given way to sophisticated market measurement, and firms have modified QFD to work within their corporate cultures.

The following case study illustrates how one company successfully used the House of Quality and QFD to enhance sales and profit while satisfying customers and reducing the cycle time of new product development. This case is rare because the company has agreed to share all the details of the application and the business implications.

The paper begins with a brief overview of the House of Quality concept. Then I describe the case study, and, to help readers understand the application of the method to a wide variety of markets, I close the paper with eight brief examples of other applications.

The House of Quality

Mitsubishi’s Kobe shipyard developed quality function deployment in 1972. Ford and Xerox brought it to the United States in 1986, and, in the last five years, it... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.

 
 

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