5.2 Overview of CTQs
In the wave of business competition, meeting customer needs is the core essence of an enterprise's survival and development. Critical To Quality (CTQ), that is, the key quality elements, refers to the key characteristics or indicators that products or services must possess in order to meet customers' expectations and needs. Accurately identifying the CTQs in a project is crucial. It is like a compass, ensuring that all the efforts of an enterprise are precisely directed towards meeting customer needs, so that every investment can be translated into customer satisfaction and loyalty. Confirming CTQs is the starting point of the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) activity. Generally speaking, we will identify one or two CTQs to clarify the specific path for improving the quality of products or services.
Pay attention to the important needs of customers
The essence of enterprise operation is to create value for customers. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on what is truly important to customers. This requires in - depth understanding of customers' expectations, preferences and pain points, rather than just staying at a superficial level of cognition. Only in this way can a solid foundation be laid for the subsequent identification and analysis of CTQ.
Step 1: Evaluate the customer's opinions
Identify customer groups
An enterprise's customers cover both internal and external aspects and are usually not single. External customers are the direct consumers of an enterprise's products or services, and their feedback directly reflects the market demand and trends. Internal customers are the service recipients among different departments within the enterprise, and their needs also have an important impact on the overall operational efficiency of the enterprise.
Collect customer feedback data
There are various ways to collect external customer data. Customer complaints are the most direct way to reflect problems, which can enable enterprises to quickly understand the serious defects in products or services; customer visits can provide in - depth insights into customers' usage experiences and potential needs; customer surveys can collect customers' opinions and suggestions on a large scale; discussions within the sales team can obtain customer feedback from the perspective of front - line salespeople; competitive analysis helps enterprises understand the gaps between themselves and competitors in meeting customer needs; on - site self - experience allows enterprises to feel the actual situation of products or services from the customers' perspective. For internal customers, directly communicating with internal staff, obtaining feedback, and analyzing various KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are effective data collection methods.
Key points for data collection
In the process of collecting data, it is necessary to precisely screen out the data essential for analyzing CTQ and avoid the interference of irrelevant information. At the same time, enterprises should be good at interpreting the subtext of customers. Since customers' expressions may be euphemistic or inaccurate, what they say may not be completely equivalent to their actual needs. This requires enterprises to make comprehensive judgments from multiple dimensions such as customers' words and deeds and consumption behaviors, distinguish the true from the false, and dig out customers' real needs.
Step 2: Convert the customers' opinions into CTQ
After collecting the customer feedback data, it is necessary to systematically summarize and classify it. Transforming customer suggestions into specific requirement indicators for products and services is a process from abstraction to concreteness. In this process, it is necessary to conduct in - depth analysis of the relationship between internal indicators such as business cycle time, cost, and defect rate, and the customer - required delivery time, price requirements, and quality requirements. Consider what specific measures the enterprise can take to meet customer needs.
Step 3: Set the priority of each CTQ
Analyze using the KANO model
To prioritize CTQs according to customers' requirements, the KANO model is an effective analysis tool. Customers' requirements can be roughly divided into basic requirements, satisfaction requirements, and unexpected requirements.
Examples of different types of requirements
Taking a restaurant as an example, the cleanliness and tidiness of the dining tables are the most basic requirements, which represent the bottom - line of products and services. If even this basic requirement cannot be met, customers are likely to leave. The quality of the dishes belongs to the satisfaction requirements. The more delicious the dishes are, the higher the customers' satisfaction will be. And when the restaurant offers unexpected small gifts or discounts at the time of checkout, it is a pleasant surprise that exceeds customers' expectations and can further enhance customers' loyalty.
Processing strategies for different requirements
Regarding the basic requirements, enterprises must prioritize handling the unmet parts because this is a prerequisite for customers to choose the enterprise's products or services. If the basic requirements cannot be met, even if the enterprise performs excellently in other aspects, it is difficult to win customers' recognition. For the satisfaction requirements, enterprises need to comprehensively evaluate their own capabilities and costs to ensure that they can meet customers' expectations as much as possible within a reasonable cost range. As for the part that provides "surprises", it should be considered on the basis of meeting the basic requirements and satisfaction requirements.
Step 4: Integration with business strategies
Review the matching degree between CTQ and business strategy
After completing the identification and priority setting of CTQ, it is necessary to re - examine whether CTQ is consistent with the enterprise's current business development strategy. In actual operation, there may be potential conflicts in aspects such as quality and cost. For example, improving product quality may lead to an increase in cost, which requires finding a balance between the two.
Participation of relevant personnel
This process requires the participation of the Process Owner and the Business Sponsor. They represent the business process and business strategy respectively and can provide authoritative and practical suggestions. At the same time, it is necessary to ensure that the entire project team clearly understands the CTQs that need attention, so that they can collaborate during the project implementation process to jointly achieve the enterprise's goals.