Summary

In this chapter, we were focused on a process to take the input we had received from our customers and turn them into successful products and launches. First, we started by discussing the various types of requirements we may have uncovered during our VoC process, and learned how to write them into a meaningful document to be delivered to the engineering team. As part of this, we discussed functional versus non-functional requirements, as well as delved into detail on what kind of characteristics our requirements should have. From there, we discussed the origins of QFD, the elements of QFD, and went through a detailed exercise on how an airplane seat manufacturer might use QFD to prioritize the most important customer requirements, design requirements that will fulfill those customer requirements, the competitive landscape, and a design score that tells us which design requirements will yield the highest level of customer satisfaction.

Once the design specification was set, we turned...