Application of Quality Function Deployment for the Supplier Selection Process (Case Study)

The manufacturing organizations are facing the pressure of increasing competition due to the varied dynamic demands of the customers. In this competitive scenario, ‘voice of customer’ gains importance. It needs to be translated into technical language. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has been used for performing this kind of translation. The concept of supply chain is also gaining popularity as manufacturing organizations adopt the concept of outsourcing as a means to satisfy their varied customers’ demands. In supply chain management, supplier selection is a vital issue that has to be done with extreme care. In this context, this paper reports a case study in which QFD technique has been used for supplier selection in an Indian electronics switches manufacturing company. The validation results indicated the practical feasibility of deploying this approach in industrial scenario.