Quality Function Deployment (QFD) was conceived in Japan in the late 1960' s, and introduced
to America and Europe in 1983. During the period between the late 1960's and early 1980's, the
concept of QFD was evolved from the belief that Total Quality Control must include not only checking
of the control points during production, butan understanding of the requirements prior to the design
phase. In the late 1960's, Japanese companies were breaking from their post World War II mode of
imitation and copying to a more original mode of product development 1, making design quality an
important consideration. The need to understand the critical design issues prior to production was
acknowledged and QC process charts were widely used to ensure that the design criteria were met
during manufacturing, but there was no formal system to translate the customer's needs into the initial
design and subsequent process control points. Thus, an opporttmity was created for QFD to come to
fruition as a method to check the design itself for adequacy in meeting customer requirements and to
translate those requirements to production.
At this juncture, the quality chart as created by the Kobe Shipyards of Mitsubishi Heavy Industry
(MHI) became known. The quality chart developed at MHI showed the relationship between customer
needs and quality characteristics. Because the quality chart was first created at Kobe, it is often stated
that QFD originated there. However, Akao states that "I first wrote about quality deployment, however,
in an article published in April 1972, which described both the terminology and the procedure. This
article was a compilation of what I had taught and experimented with at various companies over a six
year period beginning in 1966. The writing of this article took place before the MHI quality chart was
made public in May of 1978" 2. In 1983, Akao published an article on QFD in Quality Progress, the magazine by the American Society of Quality Control, and began giving lectures and seminars to American audiences. It was at this time that QFD was brought to the American automotive industry and the QFD Institute was founded. Since then, QFD has been extensively utilized in many diverse applications and industries. Examples of this diversity include the use of QFD in developing education products for Northern Australia beef producers 3, designing the animatronics for the Triceratops Encounter at Universal Studios in Florida 4, exploring a new market for fresh pork sausage in southern Brazil 5, and improving the Ritz-Carlton's housekeeping system 6. There have also been numerous QFD projects in the automotive industry including Visteon's power train control systems division work on fuel system components 7 and Ford Motor Company's project on automotive painting