Lesson 5 | Neehar Kulkarni

Part 1:
Hauser and Clausing in [1], define and explain the techniques to create a tool called the House of
Quality that forms a part of the quality function deployment process. This tool, which can be
adopted by all the functional teams within a company, helps the company to address the customer
requirements and facilitates better planning, communication and decision making within a
company/organization by mapping attributes from one phase of the design process to the next.
This paper describes in detail the method to construct a house of quality that forms that first link
amongst a group of houses that convey customer requirements right through till the manufacturing
process.
The house of quality starts with knowing and understanding the customer requirements and wishes
termed as customer attributes (CAs). This step is carried out by the market research team in various
ways such as via focus groups, conducting interviews, displaying products and gathering customer
reactions etc. It is very important to know who the customers are while carrying out this process.
The CAs are usually grouped together in bundles of attributes which represent the overall product
characteristic or problem. It is usually standard practice to capture and note down the exact
customers words and phrases while creating the CAs.
The next time in building the house of quality is to determine the relative importance of each CA
with respect to each other by means of weightings which as displayed in the house besides the
CAs. This is carried out by experienced team members who interact with the customers during the
survey, by studying the actions and the words used by the customers during the survey, or using
statistical techniques that determine the customers preference with respect to existing or
hypothetical products.
The next segment of the house of quality is the customer evaluation of the competing products
which is places on the right hand side of the house opposite to the CAs. Comparison with the
competition can help the company identify opportunities for improving their product and/or
introducing a new feature or a product in a particular segment which essentially helps the company
to formulate its strategies.
The next, and a very important feature of the house of quality is the engineering characteristic (EC)
list placed on the top along the house. Each engineering characteristic can address more than one
customer attribute and it should describe the product in terms that directly affects customer
perceptions. The authors emphasize on the need to carefully determine the engineering
characteristics as they can have lasting impact on the way a product is developed.
The next step involves the filling up of the relationship matrix that determines the influence of a
particular engineering characteristic on the customer attributes. Using engineering judgment,
experience or results from statistical studies, the team can employ numbers or symbols to
determine the strength of these relationships. Once this relationship is determined, the team then
adds objective measures at the bottom of the house for each EC which in turn helps them to set up
target values for each EC for the redesigned product.

Lesson 5 | Neehar Kulkarni

The final aspect of the house is the roof or the correlation matrix placed at the top of the house. It
determines the impact one engineering characteristic can have on the others. It sometimes helps
the team understand which features have to be designed collaterally or which features need not be
redesigned at all if they have a negative impact on other characteristics.
All in all, the development of the house of quality can be modified by companies to suit their own
needs and convenience. It encourages engineers, marketing executives as well as managers to
understand each others priorities and goals and work together towards building a successful
product. Eventually, the authors explain how an idea can be implemented effectively right through
till manufacturing using a linked system of houses and thus effectively convey the voice of the
customer in developing the new product.
References:
[1] Hauser, J. and Clausing, D., 1988, "The House of Quality," Harvard Business Review,
May/June pp. 63-73

Lesson 5 | Neehar Kulkarni

Olwenik and Lewis in [2] describe the steps involved in developing a house of quality and argue
that its application should be restricted only to aid in the conceptual aspects of the design process.
They state that its use as a quantitative decision support tool in engineering design has some flaws
which are explored experimentally as well as empirically in the paper. They believe that the
deficiency in the house of quality results from the step carried early on in the design process where
the customer attributes are mapped to the technical attributes by specifying quantitative
relationships between them.
To start off, the authors describe in brief, the steps carried out to build a house of quality. They
talk about various aspects of a house of quality such as customer attributes (CAs), technical
attributes (TAs), relationship matrix and correlation matrix. They also define other aspects of the
house of quality such as importance sections, customer ratings, technical importance, target value
specifications and technical difficulty ratings. In the steps defined to create the house of quality,
the authors also specify the formulae needed to compute the technical attribute importance value.
The authors explain that the house of quality is commonly applied to determine the relationship
between the customer attributes and technical attributes of a product. However this involves some
interpretation and characterization of the importance of technical attributes that eventually
determines the success of the product. The authors argue that there are two complexities involved
in the implementation of house of quality methodology that can render the results meaningless. To
investigate these complexities, the authors first mention some implicit assumptions that are made
while implementing the house of quality model.
The first assumption is that the CAs and their individual importance are truly representative of
the customer base. The second assumption is that the TAs are the appropriate, measurable product
characteristics to meet the CAs. The third assumption is that designers can identify when a
particular TA relates to a particular CA and the qualitative strength of that relationship. The fourth
assumption is that the designer can later assign quantitative values to represent the qualitative
relations. [1]
The authors inform that the most common scale used to represent the relationship between the
different CAs and TAs is the 1-3-9 scale although it is not necessary to do so. The authors primarily
question the fourth assumption mentioned above that states that the designer can actually make
any kind of quantitative assessment that reflects how a given TA can affect the perception of the
customers. The authors further explore the deficiency of this assumption through experimentation
and empirical study.
The authors designed an experiment that identifies factors that represent the third and the fourth
assumption. The first factor, column density represents the number of CAs that a given TA
effects [1]. The second factor, qualitative tendency represents the most common qualitative
relationships for a given TA [1]. The third and final factor, quantitative scaled is the three
number scale that is utilized to replace the qualitative scale for calculation of the technical
importance [1].
The authors then performed a statistical study to study the effect of scale choice on the first and
the second factors mentioned above by varying only one TA and keeping the rest constant. Based
3

Lesson 5 | Neehar Kulkarni

on the results obtained from the effect of varying the quantitative scale, the authors conclude that
the choice of a three number quantitative scale has no effect on the final relative weight and rank
of a given TA. They further claim that the scaled utilized by the designers are nothing more than
a guess to describe the quantitative level of the relationship that exists between the CAs and the
TAs. After carrying a statistical t-test to corroborate their findings, the authors finally conclude
that the relative weights calculated in a house of quality should not be used as a quantitative
measure of the relative importance of one TA over another.
Further, the authors describe an example of a house of quality for the design of a hair dryer to
prove the errors associated with the assumption of quantitative relationship scale. In the first study,
the authors seek to prove that the relative weights calculated in the example are no better than
those generated by some random process. Three random processes were compared to the existing
example. The close proximity of the results obtained via such random processes to the existing
values confirmed the authors claim that the quantitative scaled adopted in the house of quality do
not necessarily represent the true relationship between the CAs and the TAs. In the second study,
the authors employ triangular distributions to represent the uncertainty that exists in the actual
quantitative scale choice and the fuzzy nature in a given qualitative relationship [1]. The authors
essentially prove that the rank order of the TAS is sensitive to the choice of scale employed to
describe a qualitative relationship.
Thus, to summarize, the authors state that while the house of quality tool is an effective qualitative
assessment tool, limitations should be placed on using the quantitative values obtained from them
as a decision making criteria. They further encourage the need for improving the conceptual
soundness of the method by developing a more thorough quantitative mechanism to address its
shortcomings.
References:
[1] Olewnik, A. and Lewis, K., 2005, "Can a House Without a Foundation Support Design?"
ASME 2005 Design Engineering Technical Conference. Paper No. DETC2005-84765

Lesson 5 | Neehar Kulkarni

Part 2: (Apurva Patel, Neehar Kulkarni, Zachary Satterfield)

Requirements for a backpack (Neehar Kulkarni):
Demands:
1) Compartments: Min 2, Max 3
2) Bottle Holder: Min 1, Max 2
3) Laptop Compartment
4) Rainproof material
5) Strap Length adjustment
6) Good Weight carrying capacity
7) Good zip chain life
Wishes:
1) Rain Protection Cover
2) Slot for Headphone wire
3) Grab handle
4) Color options
Integrated Requirement list:
Company name
Requirements list for a backpack
Changes

D
W

Issued on 09/11/14
Page:1

Requirements

09/11/14

Responsible
Responsible group

D
D
D
D
W
W
D
D
W
D

Carry a laptop
Carry books
Space for Pencils/Pens/Thumb drives
Rainproof
Color Options
Bottle Holder
Grab Handle
Adjustable shoulder straps
Shoulder padding
Overall Durable
Replaces issue of xx/xx/xx

The requirement list was generated by integrating the requirements listed by all the team members.
It was observed that the requirements listed by all the team members were almost similar to each
other with not many deviations. Discussions were conducted to characterize the requirements into
demands and wishes. Also, on further evaluation, it was determined that all the requirements could
further be categorized into basic, technical performance and attractiveness requirements as stated
in Pahl and Beitz. Based on these characterizations, customer ranks were allotted to each
requirement in the ranks of 1-3-9 and the house of quality was subsequently generated which is
shown below:
Note: The reference template for the HoQ was obtained from www.fppt.com
5

Importance Rating
(Priority X Relationship)

9
9
3
3
9
1
1
3

+_
+

_+
+

9
9 3 1 3 9 3
9
9 3 1 3
3
3
1 1
1
1
1
1 1
1
1
9 9
9 9 3
3
3 1
1 1 3
1
1
1
1 1
3
9
3

1
9

3 1

Targets

Correlations:
+ Strong Positive
+ Positive
_
Strong Negative
_
Negative

1 9
3 9 9 9 9 9 1 9

183
8
108
176
250
261
180
189
99
168

Customer Requirements

Carry Laptop
Carry Books
Spaces for Pencils/Pens
Space for Charger
Rainproof
Bottle Holder
Color Options
Grab Handle
Adjustable Shoulder
Straps
Shoulder Padding
Overall Durable

House of Quality for

Backpack Design

Volume
Self-Weight
Seal Effectiveness
Fabric Material
Load Capacity
Stitch Strength
Zipper Material
Overall Cost
Padding Material
Zipper Fatigue Life

Technical
Requirements

Customer
Priority

Customer Assessment/
Competitive Evaluation

4 10 8 6 2 1 5 3 9 7
Technical Assessment

Relationships:
Strong = 9
Medium = 3
Weak= 1

Lesson 5 | Neehar Kulkarni

The house of quality generated above implements the 1-3-9 scale for customer attribute importance
values as well the relationship matrix. The customer assessment or competition evaluation column
is left blank due to the lack of an available product and competitive product as well. The technical
assessment row gives a rough idea of the important technical attributes associated with the
backpack design. Since the existing product data corresponding to each technical attribute and also
the competitive product data was unavailable, the target values for each technical attribute were
not specified in the house of quality.

Lesson 5 | Neehar Kulkarni

Part 3:
Product Proposal
In todays world, most technologies are developed with human comfort and convenience in mind.
With the development of computer and electronic technologies in the last two decades, mankind
has seen some of the most jaw-dropping innovations and products. Keeping in mind the
technological prowess now available to us, I propose a product that would further add to the
comfort and convenience of the regular customer. I propose an autonomous shopping/luggage cart
that would follow the customer while he/she shops in the shopping stores or strolls his/her way
through the airport terminals.
Carrying along huge carts while shopping in supermarkets is a cumbersome task. During peak
hours, the customer has to make sure he/she does not collide with fellow customers while
shopping. Also, airline passengers have to push along heavily loaded luggage carts from one place
to another. Using autonomous carts that follow them as they walk would serve to address this
issue. These carts would have a huge potential market in the US alone where super markets and
malls would want to offer their customer a comfortable shopping experience. Large number of
domestic as well as international airports will also serve as a market for these carts. Also,
abandoned carts in parking spots or on pavements are sometimes stolen or misplaced and serve as
an obstruction in the way of fellow customers/passengers. Also, additional workforce has to be
implemented to fetch back the carts and bring them to their default location frequently. This
problem will also be addressed by the product features mentioned below.
It is proposed that each cart would be fitted with a small removable device near the handle which
when held by the customer will serve as a following guide for the carts. The carts would be fitted
with sensors and motors and will be programmed to have anti-collision features. It would be
installed with various settings that would basically determine if the cart follows, leads or moves
alongside the customer/passenger. The motors would be driven by rechargeable batteries. When
the batteries are discharged or if the customer prefers not using the autonomous function, pushing
the cart manually would serve as a way of charging the batteries. Also, when the removable device
is inserted back into the cart, it would serve as a reset button for the cart and it would set its course
automatically towards the default location.
It would be necessary to consider the economic impacts of using such carts as there is a good
chance that they will need more capital investment as compared to the existing ones. It might add
to the over-all carbon footprint as they will be recharged with electrical power which would further
add to the spending of the stores/airports. Also it might reduce the dependence on the need of work
force needed to manage the carts. However, having said that, a proper economic analysis must be
carried out to consider and compare the cost savings observed by not employing additional
workforce to manage the carts and the expenditure incurred in capital investments and paying the
additional power bills. However, it is likely that the stores/airports incorporating these carts will
experience an increase in customer base as it would definitely add to their comfort and
convenience.