Managing product quality, risk, and resources through resource quality function deployment

Decisions made in the early stages of product development projects are vital to their success. Such decisions include setting target product quality, allocating resources, as well as deciding whether to terminate or continue the project. In this study, we propose a new method that, based on a mathematical programming extension of quality function deployment, uses detailed information about the product and the organizational marketing and engineering competencies. The method outputs detailed information regarding project resource allocation, planned product quality, target market share, and resulting project risk that support the aforementioned decisions. The method is exemplified on the development of a recently patented product concept. While the product has never been developed, it is used to illustrate the proposed approach. The benefits and limitations of the method are discussed.