The dimensions of performance, features and conformance are often interrelated. We therefore need to recognize that there are four levels of customer requirements as

1. Expectations that refer to the basic attributes, which one would expect to be present in the product as standard features,
2. Spokens that refer to the specific features, which the customer would say and want as a feature in the product.
3. Unspokens that refer to the attributes of a product that the customers would generally ask for but are still important and hence, cannot be ignored.
4. Exciters which are also known as delighters and are features that make the product unique and distinguish the same from their competitors.

These requirements must be satisfied at each level before we move and address those at the next level. Not all customer requirements are equal and hence it becomes very essential to identify these requirements which are important and ensure that they are delivered in the product. To do this one must adopt a strategy for actively seeking the ‘the voice of the customer’.

Quality Function deployment

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a planning and problem-solving tool that is used from transforming customer requirement into the engineering characteristics of the product. QFD helps to transform the customer needs (also referred to as voice of customer) into engineering characteristics (and appropriate test methods) for a product. It is a graphical technique, which systematically looks at all the elements that are deemed important based on customers survey go into the production definitions. A sample layout of the QFD diagram is shown below. Further analysis of QFD with real-life examples is presented later in Lecture 3 of Module 5 (Design for Quality).