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ISO 16355 and QFD Black Belt^® Training

• "How does the QFD Black Belt^® facilitator training coordinate with the seven parts of the ISO 16355 standard?"
• "How will the QFD Black Belt^® training help me better implement the standard in my organization?"
• "Can the ISO 16355 standard be a substitute for QFD Black Belt^® training? Would reading the standard give me the level of knowledge that one would have learned in the QFD Black Belt^® course?"

These are important questions, especially for anyone who currently holds a leadership position or is aspired to become one in the future, whether it involves new product development, business transformation, project management, innovation, process reengineering, etc.

In September 2019, we have inaugurated the first advanced modern QFD training program since the completion of the ISO 16355 standard for QFD. The QFD Institute's QFD Black Belt^® Certificate Course offers the full depth and breadth of modern Comprehensive QFD and the QFD processes that are essential for advanced practitioners, QFD team facilitators, and QFD trainers—beyond what is covered in the ISO 16355.

First, some basics.

The ISO 16355 standard is comprised as follows. Several of these parts have been introduced in previous newsletters as well as several papers presented at the ISQFD over the past five years. Note that Part 7 has been integrated as an Annex to Part 6 rather than being published as a separate document.

The ISO standard covers a limited portion of the QFD Black Belt^® training, which was first offered in 2001 based on advanced QFD Master Classes taught by Dr. Yoji Akao (founder of QFD) and others from 1994 to 2000. The Master Classes addressed specific topics such as historical foundations of QFD, emerging tools and techniques, and implementation guidelines which were then aggregated into an end-to-end process in the QFD Black Belt^® program.

This end-to-end process begins upstream even before a project is chartered and, to assure quality, must flow downstream to acquiring prioritized customer needs, designing innovative solutions, building the product, commercializing the product to get it to market, and supporting after-sales service and disposal after use.

The QFD Black Belt^® training further addresses how these development phases change when applying to manufactured products, processed products, service products, software and information products, and internal business processes. Finally, the QFD Black Belt^® training addresses how to facilitate cross-functional QFD teams, and in a follow-up program how to train and certify QFD Green Belts^®.

The 43 chapters of the QFD Black Belt^® training book are over 1,000 pages and is accompanied by numerous case studies, the 100+ ISO 16355 Bibliography reference papers, and Excel templates to support these basic and advanced methods and tools.

Let us share more details:

• QFD Black Belt^® (BB) Chapters 1-3 introduce the historical foundations of QFD and related methods and the role they play in a Total Quality Management (TQM) environment. This covers the strengths and weaknesses of early QFD models including 4-Phase QFD, Matrix of Matrices, Comprehensive QFD, and modern Blitz QFD^®. ISO 16355-1:2015 covers only some of these topics but descriptions and examples are limited.
• BB Chapters 4-9 are an analysis of the Voice of the Business which includes strategic product portfolio planning, competitive analysis, technology opportunities, and project deliverables. This also includes Hoshin Kanri (Policy Management), New Lanchester Strategy, Technology/Concept Innovation, Strategic QFD, QFD Project Selection using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and Defining Project Success Criteria. ISO 16355-2:2017 covers only some of these topics with limited descriptions and examples.
• BB Chapters 10–12 and 15 identify critical-to-project customers and methods to acquire customer needs. This includes customer segmentation based on both demographic and application analysis, customer mapping and work analysis, customer visits (gemba), and other methods. ISO 16355-2:2017 covers only some of these topics with limited descriptions and examples.
• BB Chapter 14 analyzes quantitative voice of customer and stakeholder with several statistical methods. ISO 16355-3:2019 covers only some of these topics with limited descriptions and examples.
• BB Chapters 13, 16–18 analyze voice of customer to extract true customer needs with the Customer Voice Table, uncover latent customer needs with the Affinity and Hierarchy Diagrams, and prioritize critical-to-improve customer needs with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and target performance threshold with the Quality Planning Table. ISO 16355-4:2017 covers only some of these topics with limited descriptions and examples.
• BB Chapters 19–24 transfer customer needs into design requirements (Maximum Value Table and modern House of Quality matrix). ISO 16355-5:2017 covers only some of these topics with limited descriptions and examples.
• BB Chapters 25–35 shows how to adapt QFD downstream deployments for manufactured products, processed products, service products, software and information products, and internal business processes. Additional instructions for emotional quality, technical innovation and Super-Pugh concept selection, function analysis and value engineering, target costing, and reliability and security are covered. These deploy from system level to components to build to support/service design. ISO 16355-5:2017 and ISO/TR 16355-8:2017 cover only some of these topics with limited descriptions and examples.
• BB Chapters 36–40 cover integrating and customizing QFD methods and tools for your organization. This is not covered in ISO 16355.
• BB Chapters 41–43 give supplemental details of the 7 Management and Planning Tools, SPC, and AHP. This is not covered in ISO 16355.

As shown, the ISO 16355 standard offers limited details and examples of the basic and advanced QFD methods and tools. It does not, however, cover the depth and breadth of the QFD process necessary for advanced practitioners, QFD team facilitators, and QFD trainers.

The QFD Black Belt^® training is designed for practitioners, facilitators, and trainers to give the skills necessary to lead teams through product, service, software design, as well as business transformation of the internal organization. The public course is offered once each year in the U.S. In-company training option is available and highly recommended. For details, please contact us.

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