Takt time, cycle time and bottlenecks explanation - YouTube

Quality function deployment or QFD helps you to direct your attention to those things that matter

the most for the client....

when designing or redesigning any kind of product or service for their clients. That could be software.

That could be a theme park. That could be a car.

It does not matter. In our case....

many many many years back, before we were even certified as Lean Six Sigma professionals, at the university

that we teach....

we came to the conclusion that our undergraduate business administration degree needs to be redesigned.

Because for years it had remained as it was and it was time for a redesign.

At that time, the process was a huge mess.

You have all these parties, professors, researchers, normal lecturers, I.T. people, support staff, management...

all of them wanting to somehow control this process.

And no one really knew exactly what we should focus on to deliver the customer, th potential students....

the most value for his or her money.

So the process was very messy.

Had we known about the QFD, the process would have been much more lean, efficient and effective.

So in this exercise we're going to use that hypothetical example of designing an undergraduate business

administration degree with the help of the QFD tool.

QFD actually is quite a broad concept.

It really is.

But at the absolute core of it is this, the so-called house of quality.

Now why is this called the house of quality?

While I guess it kind of looks like a house. It doesn't look like my house....

but it doesn't matter. It looks like a house nevertheless. Now if you browse various sources, books or internet...

...doesn't matter, and you look for the house of quality, you will notice something.

Each source uses a variation of this house of quality that looks slightly different from the other one.

The reason is actually quite simple.

There is no universal definition of how a house of quality should actually look like.

But there is a core definition. And we use that core definition.

So our house of quality contains all the elements that should be there. But maybe in another source you

will find that there is an extra element there or an element that we use, maybe not there. Does not matter

This contains all the important stuff.

By the way, if you purchased the course, then attached to this video is a resource, a file, that basically

contains this: An empty house of quality, that you can later use for your own studies or for your own work.

So you can download this empty template as well.

If you have purchased this course, it is attached to the video.

Also an exercise is attached to this video, so please also download that.

Let's go back to our house of quality.

On the left side we see the so-called voice of customer.

That is what the customer, the potential student, says he or she wants.

The program should be international.

Affordable. The degree should be respectable.

The program should be flexible. A realistic passing chance. The program should be cool.

All right.

Just fictional answers.

Furthermore, we asked this hypothetical customer to give some kind of weight to these things that he

or she actually wants. And we use 1 3 and 5 as weights. 5 being very important.

1 being not so important and 3 being something in the middle.

Why 1 3 and 5?

Why not 1-10?

???

Well it's a personal choice.

You can deviate from that as long as you give higher scores to things that are more important.

It does not really interfere with the end result all that much.

We use 1 3 and 5.

On top, we see the factors that we control.

Now what do we control?

We control for instance the number of lectures, the number of tutorials....

The number of research articles that our professors publish per year, or the approximation of that.

The number of test moments.

How often can you do an exam?

The number of online lectures. So the lectures that are available online....

on top of being also available physically. The number of foreign partners. These are foreign universities

that we partner up with. And our students for instance can do an exchange program with them.

The number of professors from the business world that maybe bring with them all kinds of interesting...

stories and and cool stories, that help to make give the program a little bit spice, a little bit practical flavor.

....

The number of elective courses of course we control. And the study cost is also something that we control.

We also control a lot more, but we cut it off at this point because this is just meant to be an example.

Now here in the middle part...

You see all kinds of symbols scattered throughout.

....

Now these symbols, they come actually from this part.

So we see that we use the symbol the cross to indicate a strong relationship and it has a numerical

value attached to it, namely 10. We use the * to indicate a medium relationship.

And it has also a numerical value attached to it, namely 5.

And if we don't use a symbol, if we leave it blank, then there is no relationship, or the relationship...

is very weak and it has a numerical value of zero. Again, 0 5 and 10.....

these are just values that work for us. If rather you would use 1 2 and 3....

that is also OK and won't really interfere with the end result all that much. So feel free to deviate...

if that is what you feel better with.

Now as far as the choice for these symbols, you actually do this in a group, a multidisciplinary group.

Not by yourself.

So you invite a bunch of stakeholders and then together you're going to brainstorm about the following.

So for instance should we put here a symbol or not?

And in our fictional example we put there a symbol. To be more precise, we put there a cross...

which indicates just as we just showed you, a strong relationship.

What does that mean?

There is a strong relationship between this factor that we control, namely the number of foreign partner universities....

....and this voice of customer element, namely that they want to have the program to be nice...

and international.

Of course the more foreign partner universities you have, the more international experience you can potentially

offer the customer.

So that's why it has a very strong positive relationship there.

Why is there no symbol here?

Because there is no relationship, or a very weak relationship between the number of test moments and...

the voice of customer that says "I want the program to be nice and international."

That's why this part is empty.

OK.

So I assume the logic there of these symbols and what you fill in when, is now clear.

I'm not going to waste your time by going through all of them.

Please take into consideration that a level of subjectiveness is always there.

Okay.

But you try to minimize the subjectiveness as much as possible by working in a multidisciplinary group....

which hopefully prevents any kind of a bias there.

Okay.

But please realize, if someone else fills in the same, there might be a slight deviation from what you fill in....

What we do subsequently is, we actually continue to these importance factors which you see over here.

Now let's have a look at one of these values, for instance this value over here: 65.

How do we arrive there at this value of 65?

Well we look at the symbols that you see in this column and that is this one and this one. This one indicates...

a value of 10.

And this one indicates a value of 5.

You can see it basically here.

Furthermore we see here the weights.

So we multiply the weights by the numerical value of these symbols.

So we have 5 times 10, that would be this part. And we have 3 times 5 because this value is...

valued at five.

So 3 times 5 and 5 times 10.

This is 50 and this is 15.

And together they are 65.

OK.

So together they are 65. And that explains basically why you have this value here.

The same principle also counts for the other values.

I'm not going to waste your time there.

I'm sure the principle is now clear.

Now how do we interpret these value? Well as follows.

If we see here a very low value, for instance 5, that means that the factor that is attached to this value....

....namely the number of electives, does not have a very very very strong role in achieving....

customer satisfaction.

So in satisfying this voice of customer, namely what the customer wants, this factor year is not a very important one.

But this one here, that has a very high value, namely the number of foreign partners has

a very very very strong effect on satisfying the voice of customers. So basically the values that you...

see in this row, indicate how strongly you should focus on those factors that you control.

This is a very very very useful thing.

Looking back at the problems that we faced when we wanted to redesign our program, I only wish that at

that time we were aware of this tool and could utilize it. Because it really helps you to focus your...

attention and see which factors should I focus on the most in order to satisfy that customer's demands.

Now in this column we provide information about our main competitor, or our main competitors, as an average.

And we do it like that.

If the competitor is not doing such a great job on that elements, we give a score of 1, which indicates

that the performance is quite bad.

If their performance is OK, we give them 3.

And if the performance is very good or excellent we give them a score of 5.

Again 1 3 and 5 is our personal choice.

If rather you would like to do 1 2 and 3, that is also fine, as long as it's clear to you and those working with you...

.....

...what you actually mean with these various values. And they should of course be in a certain order.

In this particular case for instance we gave a score hypothetically of 1 in terms of the affordability

when we look at our competitor.

So in this hypothetical example our main competitors have very very bad affordability. In other words...

their degrees are very very expensive.

But for instance in terms of flexibility we give them a score of 5.

So our main competitors, or main competitor, is doing an excellent job at providing a flexible

business administration program to undergraduate students.

Now why do I need that information about competitors?

Because as an extra support in terms of information.

For instance, if I decide that I want to focus on the number of online lectures that I provide. Why?

Because it has a high score and it helps me to achieve the customer's wishes a lot.

So it impacts them a lot. And I wish to focus on that.

Then I look up which elements are attached to that and that would be this and it would be this one.

Okay.

And then I look at how my competitors are doing in that area. And then I see that they're doing actually...

a great job.

So for me it's a sign, that if I want to focus on that, I better do it extremely well. Because if I want...

to compete with these people, they are doing a great job. And I need to do an exceptionally great job....

if I wish to compete. It would be another story if they would be doing a poor job. Then I'd only need

to direct a little bit of my resources there and I can already outperform them.

So it's an extra piece of information there that you can use.

Now last but not least, we look at the roof of this house of quality, where we indicate basically the

relationship between the factors that we control.

For instance the relationship between study cost and the number of online lectures. And we indicate if

that relationship is highly positive, positive, negative, or highly negative. And we use these symbols basically

to indicate that.

What does positive mean?

Positive means that when one factor goes up, the other one is also likely to go up. Negative means that

when one factor goes up the other one is likely to go down.

If the relationship is not really there....

If it's weak. Then we don't use any symbol at all.

So we only use a symbol if you know it's profound positive or highly positive or a profound negative

or highly negative and otherwise we don't use a symbol at all.

Now we wanted to know the relationship between online lectures and study cost.

Okay.

Now is there a relationship?

Yes I think so, because from experience I can tell you that when you have more online lectures, that although

it costs some money to record them, over the long term the costs that you incur will go down,

because you need less professors. Many of the questions can be just answered by looking at a video.

So overall, although there are some costs in the beginning, over the long term there is a mild relationship

there that is negative. So there is a negative relationship there.

More online lectures brings down the study cost over the long term.

A little bit. Not that much.

So we use for that....

This symbol. So we use for that this symbol and it is this circle that does not have anything filled in.

Now where do we fill in that information?

You have to ask yourself where these two factors, online lectures, and study costs. actually meet.

And that is where they intersect each other.

And that would be actually at this point you see because that is where both of them meet.

So this part.

This is where you fill in this circle.

As simple as that.

Okay.

And then you make a choice per part here, whether it should be a circle or a triangle pointing up....

or a triangle pointing down, or whatever.

And if there's no real relationship there. It's not strong, or even just medium, then leave it blank.

When is this handy?

This is handy later along if you wish to....

...shift your focus for instance from this to this, or from this to this. Then this roof helps...

you to realize that, hey if I change this focus and I focus from one factor to another factor... how will they relate?

...

Okay.

This is basically the end.

I hope you realize the usefulness of this because without this, you don't know what to focus on...

...in order to serve the customer. I only wish we had this tool at our disposal.

Please make use of this free template that we made available for those who purchased the course.

It is attached to this video and also don't forget to download the exercise.

Also attached to this video/ I hope this tool is going to serve you well.