A Product Platform Development Method Using QFD

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) was initially developed to aid in designing a quality product by interconnecting customer needs in a market segment with technical requirements. Although it assists in improving product quality, it does not have a function to examine technical requirements across the major market segments serviced by a company’s product lines and to aid in developing product platform concepts. In this paper, we present a product platform development method using QFD that aids in developing platform concepts as well as improving the understanding of product family design. This method includes platform planning and platform concept exploration. Platform planning describes the extent to which a variety of products share common components, and platform concepts then are explored, which are the arrangement of common components. This paper uses an electric razor example to illustrate the proposed method.Copyright © 2007 by ASME