QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT - HOW TO IMPROVE ITS USE

Although quality function deployment (QFD) is an innovative tool to se t up the design of a new product, its use involves some practical prob lems related to size. This paper presents some took; able to simplify and improve the use of QFD. In particular; two methods are proposed. T he first deals with the generation of the correlation matrix of the en gineering design characteristics, and the second searches for the mini mum engineering design characteristics set. An application of the meth ods to a real example is also provided.