Kuijt-Evers L F M, Morel K P N, Eikelenberg N L W, Vink P
TNO Quality of Life, PO Box 718, 2130 AS Hoofddorp, The Netherlands.
Appl Ergon. 2009 May;40(3):519-26. doi: 10.1016/j.apergo.2008.09.009. Epub 2008 Nov 18.
Quality Function Deployment is proposed as an effective design method to integrate ergonomics needs and comfort into hand tool design because it explicitly addresses the translation of customer needs into engineering characteristics. A crucial step during QFD concerns the linking of engineering characteristics to customer needs in the House of Quality by the design team. It is generally assumed (looking at all the QFD success stories) that design teams can accurately predict the correlations between customer needs and engineering characteristics (also referred to as "Whats"/"Hows" correlations). This paper explicitly tests this assumption by comparing the "Whats"/"Hows" correlations estimated by a design team with those observed in a systematic user evaluation study, which has not been done before. Testing the assumption is important, because inaccurate estimates may lead to ergonomically ineffective (re)design of hand tools and a waste of company resources. Results revealed that the design team's correlation estimates were not as accurate as is generally assumed. Twenty-five percent of the estimates differed significantly with those observed in the user evaluation study. Thus, QFD is a useful method to assist design teams in designing ergonomically more comfortable hand tools, but only on the condition that the correlations between customer needs and engineering characteristics are validated, preferably by means of a systematic user evaluation study.
质量功能展开被提议作为一种有效的设计方法，将人体工程学需求和舒适性融入手动工具设计中，因为它明确解决了将客户需求转化为工程特性的问题。质量功能展开过程中的一个关键步骤涉及设计团队在质量屋中将工程特性与客户需求联系起来。通常认为（从所有质量功能展开的成功案例来看）设计团队能够准确预测客户需求与工程特性之间的相关性（也称为“是什么”/“如何做”相关性）。本文通过比较设计团队估计的“是什么”/“如何做”相关性与在系统用户评估研究中观察到的相关性，明确检验了这一假设，此前尚未有人这样做过。检验这一假设很重要，因为不准确的估计可能导致手动工具在人体工程学上设计无效（重新）设计，并浪费公司资源。结果显示，设计团队的相关性估计并不像通常认为的那样准确。25%的估计与用户评估研究中观察到的结果有显著差异。因此，质量功能展开是协助设计团队设计出在人体工程学上更舒适的手动工具的有用方法，但前提是客户需求与工程特性之间的相关性要得到验证，最好通过系统的用户评估研究来验证。
