The development of an ideal kindergarten through concept engineering/quality function deployment

This paper summarizes the application of quality planning tools to the deve lopment of an ideal kindergarten, built from the needs and perceptions iden tified for different sorts of customers (children, teachers and parents). F or that purpose, intensive fieldwork was conducted on site at a rich sample of seven Kindergartens, including 62 exploratory interviews. By adopting c oncept engineering and quality function deployment techniques, the several stakeholders were given the chance of freely expressing their ideas and exp ectations about an ideal kindergarten. In order to explore all the richness associated with all the qualitative data collected, tools such as MPM, KF and Kano analysis were applied. Then, using the Pugh methodology, we built and determined art ideal kindergarten concept. Finally, the House of Qualit y was built to define the Kindergarten specifications, identify adequate me asurement instruments and assign targets to the most important parameters. The combined and creative use of these approaches resulted in a strongly cu stomer-oriented kindergarten that actively encourages the involvement of th e whole community and family generations in educational activities, and pro motes interaction with its surrounding environment.