Integrating Product Design and Supply Chain Design Through Qfd: a Novel Approach for Sequential Coordination of Product Design and Supply Chain Design with Customer Focus

The coordination of product design and supply chain design has been inviting attention in industry and academia. The mismatch between product type and supply chain type leads to develop complexity in supply chain network, improper supplier selection, uneconomical logistics, poor customer service etc. Supply chain performance cannot be optimized without considering the compatibility of product and supply chain attributes. In fact, achieving more customer satisfaction is the unique goal of a product design and its corresponding supply chain design. But, how to integrate product design and supply chain design with customer focus?... This question is pondering in the minds of management of various firms. Therefore, a constructive methodological approach is required to integrate product design and supply chain design. The approach proposed in this book paves the way to coordinate product design and supply chain design sequentially at the conceptual design stage using customer focused quality engineering technique called Quality Function Deployment (QFD). The proposed approach helps to reflect the customer preferences and designer conception into the supply chain planning decisions.