here - ERIM - Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

A validation Study of House of Quality key performance indicators
From the statistical analysis of the survey data we can conclude that the overall performance of the
online union is most influenced by the dimension tangibles. Items within this dimension are the
online facilities, custom made services, good presentation and the availability and accessibility of
information.
4.4.3 Conclusions House of Quality
The House of Quality was established to provide De Unie direction to the improvement of the online
union. From the presented HOQ in Figure - 13 we can conclude that the technical requirement
“Digitalization” will be the most important in the ongoing process of improvement and enables the
online union to meet the widest collection of member’s needs. Although the online union already is
an organization that functions in a digital way, digitalization will certainly help to improve services
and offers important opportunities to adapt to the needs of the members. For example; digitalization
makes it possible to increase the involvement of members by providing new methods of interaction
like forums, personalized mails, and polls. Digitalization enables De Unie to offer relevant information
in a digital way which increases the speed to offer up to date information. According to Figure - 13,
involvement of third parties is of high importance to the members. Digitalization is able to integrate
and connect different parties in the network of the online union in a fast and relative uncomplicated
way.
The House of Quality directly links the technical requirements to the needs of the members and
therefore can be considered to be one of the most untainted instruments for improvement (Akao,
1990). For this research study, considerations and correlations addressed to the HOQ are made by
the management team of the online union and the writer of this study. It has to be mentioned that
the value of the HOQ depends on the expertise of the design team. In this case team members had
different expertise’s which made it possible to interpret the HOQ from different perspectives.
The next step in this ongoing process of improvement of the online union, will be the establishment
of the second matrix of the concept of QFD; parts deployment. Due time and organizational
constraints it was not possible to start with the construction of this matrix. Therefore the House of
Quality as constructed in this research will function as a guide to give direction to De Unie for the
improvement of the online union. By the time (January 2008) De Unie will start with the next step
and will continue with the QFD approach. By construction of the second House, De Unie will
transform the “How’s” of Figure - 13 into part characteristics.
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