when OPD was first used extensively in the United states, mixed but generally favorable results were reported. Over 80 percent of teams using QFD reported a long-term strategic benefit and an improvement in cross-functional teaming a more recent survey of QFD use in the United States and Japan finds firms in both countries having success with QFD, but in somewhat different ways, US firms tend to concentrate on the HOO matrix and collect new primary data from their customers (for example, through focus groups), Japanese firms use more of the downstream matrices and rely more on existing product data (such as complaint information and warranty data) Interestingly,U.S.firms report greater benefits in cross-functional integration and decision making through QFD than do Japanese firms, possibly because the U.S firms had the most to learn about listening to customer needs
OFD has had only mixed results in some applications It's expressive in both cost and employee time, due to the extensive data collection at VOC phase it probably is best suited to major projects such as new platform development or major process reengineering
Use by firms tends to be related to better financial performance and greater customer satisfaction. Many firms, however, use it occasionally rather than consistently and especially for exploratory products (that is, one that will be dropped unless a customer will support it). Besides, the data requirements can be overwhelming the term matrix hell has been used to describe its application, and highly trained technical personnel may not be able to resolve conflicts that arise. In some cases, the customer firm may not know what it wants, so specifying the "whats" can be difficult Nevertheless, QFD has been experiencing a resurgence lately probably because it is viewed as one of the most thorough and objective ways to translate customer needs to engineering specifications. Its proponents say it is the best way to uncover customer wants and boost cross-functionality. while its detractors call it overly lengthy and boring, leading some participants to wonder why they are doing In general, the better the team, the more efficient the QFD: Figure 12.8 provides some guidelines in team selection. The efficiency of QFD can also be improved by doing one or more of the following
•Concentrate on only some of the engineering characteristics: either the apparently most critical ones or some others where improvements might be easy to accomplish
•Organize the engineering characteristics into groups and designate respon-sibility for these to specific functional areas (i.e., manufacturing, product design, even marketing)