House of Quality
The House of Quality
by John R. Hauser and Don Clausing
Harvard Business Review
Reprint 88307
Design is a team effort, but how do marketing and engineering talk to each other?
The House of Quality by John R. Hauser and Don Clausing
Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, and
ITT are getting started with it. Ford and General
Motors use it – at Ford alone there are more than 50 applications. The “house of quality,” the basic design tool of the management approach known as quality function deployment (QFD), originated in
1972 at Mitsubishi’s Kobe shipyard site. Toyota and its suppliers then developed it in numerous ways.
The house of quality has been used successfully by
Japanese manufacturers of consumer electronics, home appliances, clothing, integrated circuits, synthetic rubber, construction equipment, and agricultural engines. Japanese designers use it for services like swimming schools and retail outlets and even for planning apartment layouts.
A set of planning and communication routines, quality function deployment focuses and coordinates skills within an organization, first to design, then to manufacture and market goods that cusHARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
May-June 1988
tomers want to purchase and will continue to purchase. The foundation of the house of quality is the belief that products should be designed to reflect customers’ desires and tastes – so marketing people, design engineers, and manufacturing staff must work closely together from the time a product is first conceived.
The house of quality is a kind of conceptual map that provides the means for interfunctional planning and communications. People with different
John R. Hauser, at the Harvard Business School as a Marvin Bower fellow during the current academic year, is professor of management science at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He is the author, with Glen L. Urban, of
Design & Marketing of New Products (Prentice-Hall,
1980). Don Clausing is
by John R. Hauser and Don Clausing
Harvard Business Review
Reprint 88307
Design is a team effort, but how do marketing and engineering talk to each other?
The House of Quality by John R. Hauser and Don Clausing
Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, and
ITT are getting started with it. Ford and General
Motors use it – at Ford alone there are more than 50 applications. The “house of quality,” the basic design tool of the management approach known as quality function deployment (QFD), originated in
1972 at Mitsubishi’s Kobe shipyard site. Toyota and its suppliers then developed it in numerous ways.
The house of quality has been used successfully by
Japanese manufacturers of consumer electronics, home appliances, clothing, integrated circuits, synthetic rubber, construction equipment, and agricultural engines. Japanese designers use it for services like swimming schools and retail outlets and even for planning apartment layouts.
A set of planning and communication routines, quality function deployment focuses and coordinates skills within an organization, first to design, then to manufacture and market goods that cusHARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
May-June 1988
tomers want to purchase and will continue to purchase. The foundation of the house of quality is the belief that products should be designed to reflect customers’ desires and tastes – so marketing people, design engineers, and manufacturing staff must work closely together from the time a product is first conceived.
The house of quality is a kind of conceptual map that provides the means for interfunctional planning and communications. People with different
John R. Hauser, at the Harvard Business School as a Marvin Bower fellow during the current academic year, is professor of management science at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He is the author, with Glen L. Urban, of
Design & Marketing of New Products (Prentice-Hall,
1980). Don Clausing is