Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has been practiced by leading companies around the world since 1966. Its two‐fold purpose is to assure that true customer needs are properly…
Abstract
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has been practiced by leading companies around the world since 1966. Its two‐fold purpose is to assure that true customer needs are properly deployed throughout the design, build and delivery of a new product, whether it be assembled, processed, serviced, or even software, and to improve the product development process itself. This paper describes the evolution of the method, its current best practice, and proposals for future direction, not only to log its history and key players correctly, but also to convey the richness and depth of the applications throughout multiple industries.
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James LePrevost and Glenn Mazur
A common difficulty for an information technology (IT) department is to focus resources (people) where they can deliver the greatest benefit for the efforts made. It sometimes…
Abstract
Purpose
A common difficulty for an information technology (IT) department is to focus resources (people) where they can deliver the greatest benefit for the efforts made. It sometimes happens that a bias develops where some departments insist that their projects are more critical than others and they demand not only that their projects be attended to immediately, but also that the most senior people be assigned to them. To better utilize resources, it makes sense to prioritize projects on their benefit contribution to internal and external customers, as well as to assign skill‐appropriate people to work on them. National City has applied QFD to help them in identifying and prioritizing the needs of their customers and then using these to evaluate each project for its benefit contribution and for its degree of complexity, which will help assign appropriate resources to the project.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper will show how we customized the QFD process through the QFD Green Belt® training of the QFD Institute. It is shown how the list of internal customer needs, which became the criteria for determining project benefit, and then developed another set of criteria to judge the project complexity and the required technical skill level to work on the project, were developed. The paper includes charts and matrices defining the process.
Findings
National City can now prioritize its internal IT projects and assign the most appropriate people to them in order to deliver the greatest value to National City's customers.
Originality/value
QFD helped National City to manage internal initiatives by prioritizing them according to the benefits they had. Project management and technical resources can now schedule their time according to priority, which reduces non‐effective multitasking and will allow for more initiatives to be completed in the long run.
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Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Abstract
Purpose
Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Design/methodology/approach
Scans the top 400 management publications in the world to identify the most topical issues and latest concepts. These are presented in an easy‐to‐digest briefing of no more than 1,500 words.
Findings
When Drs Akao and Mizuno developed the quality function deployment (QFD) approach way back in the 1960s their focus was very much on the quality of new products coming through the development process. It was later extended to services. So why should a twenty‐first‐century CEO pay attention to a total quality management (TQM) tool that sounds distinctly middle aged?
Practical implications
Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.
Originality/value
The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.
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Quality function deployment (QFD) methodologies, as opposed to traditional quality approaches, are most often cited as essential for advancing the competitive advantage of an…
Abstract
Quality function deployment (QFD) methodologies, as opposed to traditional quality approaches, are most often cited as essential for advancing the competitive advantage of an organisation. Unfortunately, little is known about the roles played by leadership in the process of QFD in the Arab world. A survey of 104 middle level managers from a wide variety of United Arab Emirates’ industries who are engaged in quality management programs was undertaken to investigate the relationship between different leadership style dimensions and a number of QFD methodologies. Results indicate that the leadership styles that involve human interaction and encourage participative decision making are supportive of open and collaborative QFD methodologies.
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Rafael Cortés Rodríguez, Leopoldo Gutierrez and María del Mar Fuentes-Fuentes
This study aims to describe how the Hoshin Kanri (HK) strategic methodology facilitates implementation of lean management (LM), achieving greater integration of the strategic and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to describe how the Hoshin Kanri (HK) strategic methodology facilitates implementation of lean management (LM), achieving greater integration of the strategic and operational levels, resulting in higher performance level.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted an in-depth case study of a top-10 Spanish food retail company with experience in HK and LM. First, the authors conducted 17 semi-structured interviews with the management team. Second, the authors analyzed all minutes from meetings of the key management entities for HK monitoring over a period of 3 years (2016–2019). Third, the authors evaluated the reports and key scorecards for the same period. Finally, authors visited the operating facilities and attended multiple team management meetings.
Findings
This study demonstrates that deploying HK creates the strategic ecosystem for operations management that facilitates successful implementation of LM. By sharing common cultural concepts, both methodologies generate faster transformation of the organization and thus push it towards its strategic objectives with more determination and better performance.
Originality/value
The lack of strategic alignment is one of the most important reasons for LM failure. Although HK is a strategic methodology that facilitates this alignment, a gap exists in the literature on the benefits of HK for implementation of continuous improvement initiatives such as LM. Our research shows how HK enables a participative connection between the strategic and operational areas of the firm that reinforces the fundamental elements of LM. Employee involvement, widespread use of plan-do-check-act (PDCA) methodology and multidisciplinary work (among other effects) make HK a key element for successful implementation of LM.
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Status, which is based on differences in esteem and honor, is an ancient and universal form of inequality which nevertheless interpenetrates modern institutions and organizations…
Abstract
Status, which is based on differences in esteem and honor, is an ancient and universal form of inequality which nevertheless interpenetrates modern institutions and organizations. Given its ubiquity and significance, we need to better understand the basic nature of status as a form of inequality. I argue that status hierarches are a cultural invention to organize and manage social relations in a fundamental human condition: cooperative interdependence to achieve valued goals with nested competitive interdependence to maximize individual outcomes in the effort. I consider this claim in relation to both evolutionary arguments and empirical evidence. Evidence suggests that the cultural schema of status is two-fold, consisting of a deeply learned basic norm of status allocation and a set of more explicit, variable, and changing common knowledge status beliefs that people draw on to coordinate judgments about who or what is more deserving of higher status. The cultural nature of status allows people to spread it widely to social phenomena (e.g., firms in a business field) well beyond its origins in interpersonal hierarchies. In particular, I argue, the association of status with social difference groups (e.g., race, gender, class-as-culture) gives inequalities based on those difference groups an autonomous, independent capacity to reproduce themselves through interpersonal status processes.
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Frame resonance and innovative tactics can substitute for a movement’s lack of important resources to sustain protests. This chapter shows how the insurgent groups in the 2011…
Abstract
Frame resonance and innovative tactics can substitute for a movement’s lack of important resources to sustain protests. This chapter shows how the insurgent groups in the 2011 Tunisian uprising that lacked mass-based organizations and national leaders maintained and spread the protests using frame resonance and innovative tactics. It argues that the activists’ strategy of frame resonance drew on the collective identity of the poor people in the interior regions, mainly their collective feeling of social marginalization. Activist organizers also relied on a motivational campaign aimed at converting the feelings of injustice held by those in the interior regions into anger against the regime. The innovative tactics of the activists included locating protests inside poor people’s neighborhoods, especially in coastal regions. The engagement of poor people in the protests sustained them in two ways: by spreading and intensifying protests through individual initiatives, and by weakening the Tunisian police in sustained disruptive actions and spontaneous riots. These findings are based on the narratives of 81 activists, insurgent groups’ documents, chanted slogans, and official state documents. The fieldwork research was conducted in Tunisia during the months of April and May 2012, and June 2013.
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Tom Schultheiss, Lorraine Hartline, Jean Mandeberg, Pam Petrich and Sue Stern
The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the…
Abstract
The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.