Achieve successful system innovation with Optimised-for-Innovation QFD

Everyone’s heard of QFD but how many people have actually used it?

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a great tool to use, but it has its place.  Use it wisely, and the result can be truly radical system innovation. 

Our twist on classic QFD is appropriate for system innovations which involve managing complex multidisciplinary relationships between features and functions, even customers or staff.

We don’t get bogged down in the detail

We revel in it!  We go to an appropriate level of detail to enable radical innovation rather than purely optimising incremental concepts.  This usually means defining approaches in terms of functions, rather than features, so that the best approach is not inadvertently prejudged. 

We acknowledge and evaluate conflicts and trade-offs to focus creativity. The overall contribution from each design-choice is broken down against requirements so that true impact can be assessed (often at odds with first impressions).

We applied this approach when working with Phadia to develop an automated system for autoimmunity testing.  The approach established the overall attractiveness, to all stakeholders, of incorporating immunoassay testing into two alternative platforms; one existing and one in development. A preferred concept, meeting the specifications agreed by all, was identified within six weeks of the project start. An automated product was successfully launched several months later.

The project was facilitated jointly by the client, Phadia, and us to enable them to build up sufficient understanding of our process to manage future QFD projects in-house.