Customer Integration: The Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Leader's Guide for Decision Making

Customer Integration

Attaining higher levels of customer delight, increasing the speed and efficiency in the product development process, and increasing profits are goals many managers are struggling to achieve. Customer Integrated Decision Making, or CIDM, is a process that will show managers how to reach these goals by integrating the customer into the decision–making process and incorporating the customer′s wants and needs into the design of new products and services.

Customer Integration: The Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Leader′s Guide for Decision Making focuses on the complete CIDM/QFD process. The book details the reasons for using CIDM market identification techniques, and QFD idea generation methodologies, as well as some basic and advanced customer "choice" prediction approaches. This practical, structured, and replicable process will provide a company of any size with the tools to assure its teams′ success as they move to become linked to the customer.

Customer Integration opens with a comprehensive overview for executives, followed by a detailed discussion of how CIDM/QFD can increase profits for businesses in a variety of industries. The executive overview reviews the issues confronting companies today and gives reasons why executives will need to be linked to customers to compete. The second part of the book lays out some of the foundation knowledge that middle managers will need to have in order to commit to supporting individuals and teams and to complete CIDM/QFD projects. Part II also offers practical discussions on the critical role of leadership and the challenges of implementation. The third part of the book provides a step–by–step explanation of the process, along with a complete review of the necessary concepts and tools to make a CIDM/QFD project happen.

Customer Integration is designed for the whole company. It provides the information executives and managers need to undertake a Customer Integrated Decision–Making project and the knowledge that team members need to assure success in their project.

Advance praise for Customer Integration

"Customer Integration is written for the entire management team, from the executive to the project team members, challenging all not only to decide to use CIDM/QFD, but to achieve maximum value from the process. This is a book for those who believe delighting customers is a state of the art." ––Michael E. Holtzleiter Manager–Europe, Senco Fastening Systems

"The CIDM concepts in this book go beyond the QFD matrix analysis to show how to introduce the process into a company and how to lead a multifunctional team through the process. These concepts are helping us balance the voice of the customer in our product development process. After just one project, it is adding clarity and objectivity to our decisions by highlighting the trade–offs that must be made between customer wants, competitive pressures, and our company′s capabilities." ––Ronald A. Weeks Corporate Planning Director, Cincom Systems, Inc.

"Having completed a CIDM project, I found Customer Integration to be a comprehensive documentation of this incredible process. This very replicable methodology truly allows companies to get at the ′real′ customer requirements. The way the book is divided into sections for the executive, project and middle manager, and team members provides a clear perspective on ′hands on′ for each." ––Steve Nelson

Manager–Emerging Markets, Senco Fastening Systems

"If you are looking for structured processes that provide you with a better understanding of your customers, an understanding about what they mean by value, that promotes ′leveling′ of customer knowledge among the enterprise, that assures ′true′ teaming and reduces the time to bring innovations into the marketplace, then Customer Integration is the book that you have been looking for." ––John Edholm Vice President–Sales & Marketing, Pierce and Stevens

Doug Daetz, Quality Maturity System Operations Manager, Corporate Quality, Hewlett–Packard Company, developed the training and support infrastructure for HP′s QFD initiative from 1988–1991. For the past three years, Doug has supported the expansion and revision of HP′s internal assessment and improvement program, the Quality Maturity System (QMS), and is himself a QMS Lead Reviewer. He earned a BE in electrical engineering from Yale and a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California at Berkeley. Before joining HP, Doug was the director of quality at Shugart Corporation and an assistant professor of industrial engineering at Stanford University.

Bill Barnard is the developer and a practitioner and facilitator in Customer Integrated Decision Making. He now facilitates companies using the process and tools proven successful at Hewlett–Packard, AT&T/NCR, and other companies. Bill′s experience includes ten years as a program manager with Hewlett–Packard, fifteen years in operations management, and four years in information systems with other Fortune 500 companies. He has pioneered the use of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) for strategy planning and integrating QFD with in–context and choice–based customer research processes. Today Bill works worldwide with clients that include Hewlett–Packard, Cincom, Motorola, Pierce and Stevens, Herman–Miller, and many others. He has a degree in computer science and is certified by the American Production and Inventory Control Society as a CPIM. Bill is coauthor of The Innovation Edge.

Rick Norman is a practitioner of QFD and Customer Integrated Decision Making. He specializes in creating collaborative environments for organizations to practice structured planning and decision making in the product development process. His current work involves merging the disciplines of QFD and systemic thinking. Rick is the founder and leader of the San Francisco Bay Area QFD Users Group and is a member of the Learning Organization Network. A former CAD/CAM manager, he is a devoted student of the product development process. He holds a bachelor′s degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point.