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The purpose of this paper is to establish a three‐dimensional service house of quality (HOQ). The new service HOQ adds a dimension of quality economics to solve the problems of economic evaluation in the process of transferring customer requirements into service characteristics by traditional HOQ.

Based on the traditional two‐dimensional HOQ, this paper constructs a three‐dimension service HOQ by adding an economic dimension into the traditional structure, so that the transformation process from customer requirements into service characteristics can be evaluated with quality economic perspective. The key concern of this new model is to balance the quality improvement and economic gain of a service. The other improvement of this paper is that it uses structural equations to present the coefficient matrix in the new HOQ model to avoid human errors in the evaluation. A case study is used to verify the effectiveness of the new model.

Quality gains and costs should be considered in service design and quality improvement. The three‐dimensional service HOQ uses the dimension of quality economics to balance customer requirements and service characteristics, which is more effective than the traditional one.

The method exposed in the paper can be used by service companies for decision making in service design and quality improvement.

This paper establishes a new three‐dimensional HOQ, by which quality economics can be effectively analyzed in service design and quality improvement.

The House of Quality (HoQ) is a popular design tool that supports information processing and decision making in the engineering design process. While its application is an aid to conceptual aspects of the design process, its use as a quantitative information tool in engineering design is potentially flawed. This flaw is a result of potential designer interpretation of the HoQ results – interpretation which is invalid given the assumptions and information sources behind the HoQ – and is viewed as a critical limitation on the results of the method which can lead to potentially invalid and/or poor decisions. In this paper this limitation and its implications are explored both experimentally and through simulated application.

The approach taken in this research is to first study the HoQ through a “digital experiment” in order to identify the key factors that drive the quantitative results within the tool. Based on the results of the experiment, an example HoQ for a hair dryer is used to empirically study the resulting dangers of the quantitative information which results from the HoQ.

Through this research study of the HoQ, it is determined that while the tool offers conceptual support to the design process, the quantitative information that results is largely invalid.

For the research community the results in this paper create motivation for continued improvement of the HoQ tool from a conceptual, qualitative design aid to a sound quantitative tool. The results indicate exactly where the methodology must be improved.

For users of QFD, specifically the HoQ, the results of this research provide evidence to the limitations of the tool in providing quantitative information for design.

This paper aims to develop a framework of QFD (quality function deployment)‐based logistics service design to integrate the HOQ (house of quality) technique and modular logic to help in designing logistics services with high quality and a large service variety.

Based on a literature review, a conceptual research framework is built integrating the QFD method and modular logic together. A case study is used to illustrate a real application in logistics service design of the third‐party logistics (3PL) provider.

The results show that QFD and modularity used simultaneously as design principles can ensure service design quality at three layers (service, process, activity) in the modular logistics service platform.

This paper provides multi‐disciplinary insights for both industry and academics on how QFD/HOQ and modular logic can be integrated to systematically translate customer requirements into logistics service designs.

The framework proposed is directed to show how, at the operational level, the service providers can transform customer requirements to customer value with modular services and develop new service modules more quickly for new customers that have not been served before.

The resulting framework combining QFD philosophy and modular logic, particularly integrating three‐level HOQs paralleled with three layers in the modular service platform, adds knowledge in the research on service design, operations management and marketing.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a cross‐functional planning tool which ensures that the voice of the customer is systematically deployed throughout the product planning and design stages. One of the common mistakes in QFD is to perform analysis using an inconsistent house of quality (HOQ) chart. An inconsistent HOQ chart is one in which the information from the roof matrix is inconsistent with that from the relationship matrix. This paper develops a systematic procedure to check the consistency of information contained in an HOQ chart. The proposed consistency check can be performed prior to QFD’s main analysis to ensure the validity of the final results. A procedure for identifying the source of the inconsistency, if the HOQ chart should fail the consistency test, is also developed. The proposed procedures are illustrated through examples.

In this paper, the aim is to propose a framework for utilizing quality function deployment (QFD) and benchmarking in combination to chalk out an improvement plan that redesigns or modifies existing processes to a point where they consume the least amount of resources while imparting the maximum value (in the sense of customer satisfaction) to the output.

Using a real world case study, the paper demonstrates that the marriage of two tools – QFD and benchmarking – is synergistic in its import and vital to a company's strategic and financial superiority.

The product and process design was improved by using the combination of QFD and benchmarking techniques discussed in the paper. As a result, the company accomplished significant financial and strategic results.

The case study includes competitiveness analysis at the first house of quality (HOQ) but not at the subsequent HOQ due to lack of information from the competitors. However, the paper demonstrates the competitiveness analysis at the first HOQ which can be extended to all subsequent HOQ.

The research would be useful to academicians and practitioners in developing their own integrated versions of QFD and benchmarking methodologies to improve their products and processes and gain strategic advantage.

Despite the mutual dependence between a firm's strategic and financial performance and the consequent dependence on market share and profitability, which can both be maximized using QFD and benchmarking, the research that employs both techniques is virtually non‐existent.

The level of live, reduction of pollution and positive human health is affected by the quality of landscape. In addition, many benefits such as aesthetic, psychological and social can be achieved. The quality of landscape is integrated with the individual’s needs. The scope of landscape must be determined according to user needs and planning methods. The purpose of this study is to propose a house of quality (HOQ) model to identify the landscape design requirements. The Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) was used as a case study. The need to implement the proposed HOQ model has been identified. Also, the male and female students’ priorities have been identified, and the weight of campus landscape design elements was extracted.

The male and female IUG students’ needs were identified using a questionnaire survey. The data were analyzed for testing statistical validity and reliability using SPSS. HOQ model was built using EDRAW Max program.

The ten most important student needs are “cleanliness, praying, feeling safe, feeling comfortable psychic, drinking, spaciousness and breadth, shading, quiet, rest and sitting, and fresh air.” Based on these results and needs assessment, the HOQ was constructed. The most important design elements are “group of seats, shrubs, trees, lawns, pergola, and seats chairs or benches.”

This study adds to the designer’s knowledge about HOQ application in design, and contributes significantly to consider public participation as a way in collecting the voice of customers.

This study aims to revise the weights in the interrelationship matrix of the house of quality.

After determining customer requirements (CRs) and product design characteristics (PDCs), a house of quality (HoQ) has been developed and the interrelationships between CRs and PDCs have been determined and classified using the Kano model. The PDCs have been prioritized based on the classic HoQ and the revised HoQ. Finally the results have been compared and discussed. The television design of Entekhab Industrial Group, the largest producer of home appliance products in Iran has been selected as a case study.

Results indicated different sets of priorities derived from the two approaches. Particularly, the difference between the revised HoQ and the classic approach was due to the nonlinear relationship between CRs and PDCs.

This study was performed merely on a single product of a company, and the case study results cannot be generalized to all of the home appliance industries.

Developing the application of the Kano model in computing and revising the weights of the cells in the interrelationship matrix of HoQ is the main contribution of this paper.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a worldwide-known, design for quality approach, which gathers several design quality methods. Among them, the House of Quality (HoQ) correlates the Voice of Customer and the Voice of Company thanks to L-shaped (2D) Matrix Diagrams (MDs). This paper theorizes, as logically possible, the extension from a bi-dimensional representation (a customer and a provider) to a higher N-dimensional representational freedom without altering the typical QFD’s customer-provider posture. The purpose of this paper is to present QFD 3D: the extension of the Relationship MD in the HoQ toward a third dimension (two customers and a provider or two providers and a customer).

The proposed method is based on an existing well-known quality management tool such as MDs. The authors extend its representational capability by substituting the current L-shaped MDs (2D) with C-shaped ones (3D). The mathematical validity of this extension is described to demonstrate the correctness of the approach.

The paper presents the logical validity and a case study concerning a three-dimensional extension of the Relationship MD in the HoQ, typical of the QFD approach.

The results are limited to a three-dimensional extension. Situations where more than three actors are simultaneously involved are theoretically possible, but they are out of the scope of the current research. The difficulty in manipulating 3D representations on traditional supporting tools will be completely reversed on new computer-supported tools. The proposed method is meant to be a useful and efficient instrument for correlating the needs and the services in multi-actors-based scenario, using a QFD design quality approach fueled by IT support tools.

This paper can be used as guideline for further researches on N-dimensional extensions of HoQ. The proposed method can be used in a scenario based on the Triple Helix of Innovation. It gives a clear correlation between different needs and services, facilitating the decision-making process and the constitution of a more comprehensive view of the scenario under a quality management approach.

Thousands of articles propose different QFD case studies all based on a bi-dimensional correlation between a customer and a provider. This paper proposes a method to extend the pertinence of QFD to scenarios where more than two actors are simultaneously correlated. Considering in particular three actors, the resulting three-dimensional Relationship MD in the HoQ is a totally new design quality tool for correlating customers’ needs and providers’ services. This can result in a significant gain of time and representational ability for quality managers who have to correlate multiple customers with a service provider and conversely a customer to multiple service providers. This approach open the doors for new QFD tools fueled by IT.

The purpose of this paper is to prioritize lean production (LP) and agile production (AP) factors based on costs of quality (COQ).

After literature review, two separated houses of quality (HoQ) have been developed. By the first HoQ, LP and AP factors can be proritized based on prevention and appraisal costs and by the second HoQ, LP and AP factors can be prioritized based on failure costs. The proposed approach has been examined by analyzing data collected from 36 home appliance producers of Isfahan as an industrial province of Iran.

The first HoQ indicates that the highest and the lowest priorities are related to over-production (lean factor) and speed (agility factor), respectively. The second HoQ implies that the highest and the lowest priorities are related to responsiveness (agility factor) and inventory (lean factor), respectively. Quadrant analysis also indicates that defectives and over-processing are the two factors that have the highest priorities based on both failure costs and appraisal and prevention costs. As a major finding, LP factors have strong relationship with prevention and appraisal costs; and AP factors have strong relationship with failure costs.

The proposed approach helps organizations in reducing their costs. By clarifying the relationship of the LP and AP factors and the COQ, managers can determine appropriate strategies with the lowest cost.

The integrated approach of this study has not been applied and studied in the literature. The subject of the relationship of LP and AP and COQ is relatively new, which integrates the two areas of production management and quality management.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an innovative solution for prioritizing “Whats” and “Hows” and resolving contradictions among “Whats” in House of Quality (HoQ).

Prioritization of the influence of the weights in correlation matrices of “Whats” and “Hows” (i.e. top roof and side roof) of HoQ and integration with TRIZ contradiction matrix have been studied. Explained through a case example of banking services, initially, contradictions among requirements of 180 customers have been identified by side roof matrix and then, the 12 by 12 non-technical contradictions matrix of service TRIZ have been used to suggest principles for resolving contradictions.

Findings imply that the use of roof and side roof weights can influence the priorities of “Whats” and “Hows.”

Findings may assist researchers and practitioners in resolving ambiguity of the voice of customers, which in turn make the results of HoQ more accurate.

A new approach has been proposed in this paper for resolving contradictions of customer requirements by service TRIZ and adjusting priorities of “Whats” and “Hows” in HoQ.