The QFD Book: The Team Approach to Solving Problems and Satisfying Customers Through Quality Function Deployment

"Quality function deployment" is a group of complicated-sounding words for a very simple concept. In essence, QFD is a process for listening carefully to what your customers need and then making sure the features they want are designed in during the initial planning for a product - before it's on paper, on the assembly line, or on the shelf.
The QFD Book is an uncommonly clear and concise explanation of what QFD is all about and how to use it. In everyday English, the authors show you how to apply this powerful methodology to find out what customers want and, at the same time, how to use teams creatively to identify the real cause of problems, plan efficiently, improve quality drastically, and cut costs.
If it all sounds too good to be true, authors Guinta and Praizler were initially skeptical themselves, but "... after working with many different manufacturing and service-based companies in the U.S., we have commonly experienced a 50 percent reduction in overall costs. We have seen companies achieve 200 percent increases in productivity!"
Applying QFD to a problem, project, or product launch shows teams how to systematically pinpoint what to do, the best way to do it, the best order in which to accomplish it, and the staffing and resources required.
It's never been easy to capture customer's spoken and unspoken requirements and then convert them into useful, accurate data. The QFD Book provides a pointed way of listening to customers, using a logical system to determine how best to fulfill these needs, and ensuring that the whole team is focused on delivering to customers exactly the quality they've asked for.