| In general, a good software program
should enable you to do things that are difficult, time-consuming, or
impossible to do otherwise. I have found, however, that many commercially available QFD
software packages do little more than manipulate a House of
Quality, and that they limit the equations and
analyses used in the latest QFD Institute Belt courses. Further, their
instruction manuals show QFD as it was practiced more than 20 years ago.
For this reason, as a certified
QFD Red Belt®, I provide clients and Belt course students
with free specially formulated Microsoft Excel® templates that
contain the most
up-to-date
mathematical models and equations, and the
training and manuals to use them.
Ironically, the cost of the public
QFD Green Belt®
course (including training manual and Excel templates) can be less than many of
the commercially available QFD software packages.
Watch out for free-ware and on-line QFD
tutorials. Like their commercial brothers, they can be woefully out of date,
and can cost you precious time, effort, and QFD team good will in trying to
use them. |
