Title
Application of the QFD as a design approach to ensure comfort in using hand tools: Can the design team complete the House of Quality appropriately?
Author
Kuijt-Evers, L.F.M.
Morel, K.P.N.
Eikelenberg, N.L.W.
Vink, P.
TNO Kwaliteit van Leven
Publication year
2009
Abstract
Quality Function Deployment is proposed as an effective design method to integrate ergonomics needs and comfort into hand tool design because it explicitly addresses the translation of customer needs into engineering characteristics. A crucial step during QFD concerns the linking of engineering characteristics to customer needs in the House of Quality by the design team. It is generally assumed (looking at all the QFD success stories) that design teams can accurately predict the correlations between customer needs and engineering characteristics (also referred to as "Whats"/"Hows" correlations). This paper explicitly tests this assumption by comparing the "Whats"/"Hows" correlations estimated by a design team with those observed in a systematic user evaluation study, which has not been done before. Testing the assumption is important, because inaccurate estimates may lead to ergonomically ineffective (re)design of hand tools and a waste of company resources. Results revealed that the design team's correlation estimates were not as accurate as is generally assumed. Twenty-five percent of the estimates differed significantly with those observed in the user evaluation study. Thus, QFD is a useful method to assist design teams in designing ergonomically more comfortable hand tools, but only on the condition that the correlations between customer needs and engineering characteristics are validated, preferably by means of a systematic user evaluation study. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Subject
Ergonomics
Arbeidsproductiviteit
Comfort
Hand tool design
QFD
Customer satisfaction
Design
Ergonomics
Quality function deployment
Sales
Tools
Comfort
Customer needs
Design approaches
Design methods
Design teams
Engineering characteristics
Hand tool design
House of qualities
QFD
User evaluations
Hand tools
To reference this document use:
http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:54f600fc-d29c-4f90-b34b-9abbb364e928
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2008.09.009
TNO identifier
241521
ISSN
0003-6870
Source
Applied Ergonomics, 40 (3), 519-526
Document type
article