A COMPUTERIZED QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT APPROACH FOR RETAIL SERVICES

Product and service quality can only be effectively improved when the most important needs of customers are satisfied. Quality Function Depl oyment (QFD) is an approach used to guide R&D, manufacturing and manag ement toward the development of products and services that satisfy the needs of consumers. The QFD operations are performed by way of a diag ram called the House of Quality (HOQ). The HOQ contains information ab out the customers' needs (what), mechanisms to address these needs (ho w), and the criterion for deciding which ''what'' is the most importan t and which ''how'' provides the greatest customer satisfaction. A les s familiar application of QFD is for the improvement of retail service s. When QFD is applied to retail services, a computerized HOQ approach becomes integral to the process for providing continuous, iterative q uality improvement. The objective of this research is to develop a for mal QFD methodology for the retail industry and to build a computerize d retail QFD system. The system provides a HOQ architecture for specif ying and analyzing the customers' needs, deriving improvement strategi es, and formalizing records of progress. Furthermore, two ranking meth ods that apply customer satisfaction theory are used to assist manager s improve retail services. This system provides an integrated workbenc h for building retail HOQs and designing retail service strategies. Co pyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd