Blitz QFD

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter.
Please help improve the introduction to meet Wikipedia's layout standards. You can discuss the issue on the talk page.

Blitz QFD was developed by Richard Zultner for his clients in the software industry in the 1990s. The premise was that the House of Quality and other large matrices demanded too much time and resources when speed of development was a critical customer need. The Blitz QFD is an efficient subset of Comprehensive QFD as developed by Dr. Yoji Akao, that can be later upgraded with no wasted effort. Unlike other attempts to shorten QFD, such as cutting the breadth of the analysis by using just one matrix such as the House of Quality, Blitz QFD runs through all dimensions and phases new product development (analysis, design, development, and implementation) but only on a few threads based on the top critical customer needs. Since this requires extremely sharp focus from the beginning, several new tools were added to QFD. Blitz QFD is now a core process used in some implementations of QFD Green Belt training (e.g., the QFD Institute).

The essential elements of the method include the basic elements of the QFD method, except that the matrices usually employed are replaced by 2-3 elements at each level of analysis which represent the top-weighted elements in the traditional House of Quality. Typical techniques used to identify these top-level elements include some comparison method such as Utility or Pairwise comparison process (such as the Analytic Hierarchy Process). Another way to view this approach is to think of these elements as the major "causes" identified in an Ishikawa diagram, carrying only these few elements forward using QFD transformation techniques.

These few elements are then carried through the standard QFD transformation process to convert customer needs into product characteristics, project tasks, FMEA risks, etc.