Product Development Decision Support System Customer-Based

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has been traditionally used as a planning tool primarily for product development and quality improvement. In this context, many people have used QFD for making decisions on how to prioritize critical product areas from a customer perspective. However, it is the position of the author that the QFD process can be viewed as a decision support system that would encompass multiple facets of information to enhance the quality and output of the decision making process in the course of product development. In this paper, the author submits the QFD process in combination with other engineering decision making tools such as the Pugh concept selection and the Kepner-Tregoe analysis technique as a decision making and modeling process that is as old as management science itself. Specifically, the attempt is made to illustrate how QFD provides an iterative sequence of steps involved in decision making, from the initial problem identification to a proposal for the actual implementation plan. To make this position more applicable to the reader, the subject has been approached from an actual business environment.