house of quality

The HoQ integrates the three concepts of the “voice of the customer”, the physical characteristics of the product/solution, and the integrated nature of the product/solution into one model. To develop the HoQ, information is needed from a wide base of stakeholders, most commonly marketing, technical experts, field service personnel, customer service representatives, and different sets of customers when applied in the manufacturing industry. Though the process of developing the HoQ is valuable in itself, the model provides a communication tool for the project to arrive at an optimal solution for the customer.



The relative importance column establishes weights for customer needs based on importance; this quantifiably differentiates wants from needs. Each cell in the matrix is given a score, symbolizing the strength of the relationship between the “what” and the “how”. This score is then multiplied by the relative importance for the “what” and summed for the column. This summed value, compared with the other columns, indicates a relative importance for each “how” for the product or solution under development. This presents valuable insight to the project team when encountering a large, complex problem.

In practice, the House of Quality is developed as part of Quality Function Deployment. See Quality Function Deployment - a Knol by Peter Dahl