QFD Institute Newsletter

Report from 2019 ISQFD
By carefully observing the customer in his/her “ gemba,” a QFD practitioner develops a sound understanding of the customer’s reality beyond the stated VoC, and by using the ISO 16355 modern QFD tools he/she arrives at the true needs and innovative solutions that deliver both customer value and business goals.
The gemba method is one of the important first steps in QFD analysis. As we recently concluded the 25th International Symposium on QFD [ISQFD’19-Boise] successfully in Boise, Idaho USA, we thought to pay tribute to the Nobel Prize author, who spent the final chapter of his life in Idaho.

Although Hurricane Dorian prevented some East Coast folks from making the trip unfortunately, the 2019 ISQFD attendees from Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, UK and various US cities were greeted with glorious sun, verdant riverside parks, college football cheers, and international colleagues eager to share their QFD experience and learn.
In the Tutorial: QFD for Business Transformation, given by Dr. Kim Stansfield and Steve Dimelow of the UK, the attendees formed groups to collaborate in the exercises, such as generating an affinity diagram of business goals, identifying supporting program goals, creating a business goals table, goals hierarchy diagram and program goals table.

The attendees were then guided to calculate relative contribution of program goals to the business goals using AHP. Fortuitously, the Boise attendees were assisted in their AHP exercise by James Devlin, a former consultant at Expert Choice ®, a well-known decision making software company.
Other highlights included presentations on:

  • Net Promoter System (NPS) and QFD
  • Practical implications and benefits of ISO 16355 QFD, including updating legacy practices
  • Tools of Classical QFD vs Modern QFD
  • Using 3D virtual prototype for early needs validation
  • QFD for complex projects
  • QFD for symptom analysis for collaborative IT projects
  • QFD and AHP for capital projects
  • Teaching ISO 16355 QFD in higher education
  • and more... See the entire lists of presentations…


The ISQFD was also an opportunity for state-of-the-art ISO 16355 modern QFD learning, including the 2-day QFD Green Belt® Certificate Course and 5-day advanced QFD Black Belt® Certificate Course. Congratulations to everyone who successfully completed these demanding programs.

A special achievement was recognized for Catherine Y. P. Chan, who was awarded the 2019 Akao Prize ®.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank both speakers and participants for making the ISQFD’19-Boise truly a lively forum of mutual learning.

This year’s group size permitted more attendee engagement and good discussions on various topics including the future directions of ISO 16355 and QFD.
Planning is underway for the next year’s ISQFD. The preliminary information is that it will be held in Germany in September 2020.

We will keep you posted through this newsletter and also on the Calendar page as the details develop.

Lastly, the ISQFD’19 transactions are available from this QFD Institute web page.