quality function deployment

System engineering process that incorporates a visual language and a set of interlinked engineering and management charts. It creates customer value by drawing on the customer's needs as articulated by the customer – the key to the concept is the ‘voice of the customer’. The customer value is transformed into design and production process characteristics to give a systems engineering process that delivers product quality as defined by the customer.

The concept was introduced in Japan by Yoji Akao in 1966. According to Akao, QFD is ‘a method for developing a design quality aimed at satisfying the consumer and then translating the consumer's demand into design targets and major quality assurance points to be used throughout the production phase ... [QFD] is a way to assure the design quality while the product is still in the design stage’.