Quality Function Deployment                       click for slides : QFD

QFD is a structured process for getting the product "right" by translating customer benefits into engineering requirements and product specifications.

The essence of QFD is, first, to specify products in "consumer-speak" that reflects the end benefits that are most important to potential buyers, paying particular attention to quality cues, those attributes that most powerfully communicate a product's overall level of quality (e.g. the firmness of keys on a laptop pc).  Engineers then translate these consumer benefits into a more technical definition of requirements.  Finally, the engineering definitions are translated into very precise specifications that provide the measurements for implementing and monitoring the manufacturing process.

Once the product is technically "right", the process is reversed and communications convey back to the customers that the benefits have been delivered in the product.

 See "House of Quality", Hauser & Clausing, HBR, May-June 1988 for more details on QFD.