Engineering course design based on Quality Function Deployment (QFD) principles: Incorporation of diverse constituencies and continuous improvement

This paper presents a systematic methodology that is essentially based on incorporating basic Quality Function Deployment (QFD) principles into engineering course design. The aforementioned principles have been widely used in industry in conjunction with the basic philosophy of 'lean thinking' so as to achieve the twin goals of quality enhancement and cost minimization. It is the authors' intention to extend an identical thought process to the field of education in an engineering setting. In the authors' view, this extension will enable incorporation of the voices of widely varying stakeholders including the community, industry, academicians etc into the basic course structure. This is especially important if the university in question is a regional university that caters to the needs of local communities as well as employers. Another advantage of implementing this thought process includes rigorous control of instruction quality across a wide spectrum of instructors thereby infusing much needed objectivity into basic course design. This advantage is afforded by the basic QFD methodology which is involved with quality at al stages, starting with its building phase and ending in an ongoing continuous improvement process. A pilot study is presented at the end in order to illustrate practical utility of the methodology.