Chapter 7

Tools and Techniques for Performance Excellence

PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE PROFILE:

TEXAS NAMEPLATE COMPANY, INC.

Located in Dallas, Texas.

Privately held, family business that produces custom nameplates in small and frequent orders primarily for small businesses nationwide and abroad.

Effective use of innovative, systematic processes and technology is helping TNC achieve its goal to be:

“Better, not Bigger”.

The company develop innovative technology:

The New HotrodReal-time DashboardPipeline Dashboard

Tools for Quality Design

Costumers needs and expectation drive the planning process for products and the systems by which they are produce.

Marketing plays a key role in identifying costumer expectation.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

Is a method used to ensure that costumers’ requirements are met throughout the product design process and in the design operation of production system.

QFD originated in 1972 at Mitsubishi’s Kobe shipyard site. Toyota began to develop the concept shortly thereafter, and it has been used since 1977.

It is a tool used to translate the preferences of the costumer into specific technical requirements.

The costumer requirements– expressed in their own terms– are appropriately called the voice of the costumer.

Technical features are the translation of the voice of the costumer into technical language.

A set of matrices is used to relate the voice of the costumer to technical features and production planning and control requirements.

The basic planning document is called the costumer requirement planning matrix (House of Quality).

Building the House of Quality requires six basic steps:

1. Identify costumer attributes.2. Identify technical features.3. Relate the costumer attributes to the

technical features.4. Evaluate competing products.5. Evaluate technical features and develop

targets.6. Determine which technical features to

deploy in the production process.

Figure 7.1 The House of Quality

Interrelationship

Technical features

Relationships between costumer attributes and technical features

Voice of costumer

Importance of costumer attributes

Competitive evaluation

Priorities of technical features