Investigations on achieving continuous quality improvement in the manufacturing of shallow well jet pump through the implementation of total quality function deployment technique

Abstract

From the middle of the twentieth century, engineers have been striving to achieve continuous quality improvement by translating voice of customersand#8223; into technical languages. In order to facilitate this translation, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) technique emerged in Japan in the 1970s. QFD has been proving to be a powerful tool that can be used for translating the voice of customers into technical languages. Yet from the beginning of this century, researchers began to point out the need to refine, modify and improve the features of QFD technique. In order to fulfil this need, few researchers brought out several advanced models of QFD. Out of hem, the procedural and computational complexities are least in the case of an advanced model called Total Quality Function Deployment (TQFD). TQFD technique replaces the complex computations involved in applying conventional QFD technique with simple ratings and facilitates the implementation of technical languages in the field of application. TQFD technique is suitable for implementation in traditional organizations in which the prevalence of adequate education for adopting complex procedures is found to be scarce. In order to examine these capabilities of TQFD, three investigations were conducted in the doctoral work reported in this thesis. newlineThese investigations were conducted in a small size company, manufacturing pumps. newline newline