House of Quality Matrix Software

A house of quality matrix aids in determining whether a product meets customer needs. It is capable of storing a large amount of information and comparing large amounts of data. It gets its name from its structure which resembles that of a house.

While it may look confusing at the first glance, each portion serves a specific purpose. The product requirements are compared with customer requirements in a central matrix. Above the product requirements is the "roof", a triangular section of matrix that shows whether product requirements support each other or have a negative correlation, resulting in a tradeoff. To the right of the central matrix is a section for customer rating of each customer requirement as compared to similar products from competing companies.

Below the central matrix, there is a row for rating the organizational difficulty of each product requirement. Below that row are the technical details of each product requirement, compared to those of competitors.

When performing quality function deployment or QFD, quality planners can match customer needs with their company's product design components to support their design for Six-Sigma (DFSS) initiatives.

The house of quality matrix is just one tool that is employed in QFD, and is one of the many types of quality engineering diagrams that comes with SmartDraw software.