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DOI 10.1007/s11135-004-6814-8

Quality & Quantity (2005) 39:507–514 © Springer 2005

Quality Function Deployment in Education:

A Curriculum Review

AYŞE AYTAÇ and VELI DENIZ∗

Department of Chemical Engineering, Engineering Faculty, Kocaeli University 41040 Kocaeli,

Turkey.

Abstract. The curriculum of the Tyre Technology Department at the Kocaeli University

Köseköy Vocational School of Higher Education (KU-KVSHE) has been reviewed by using

the quality function deployment (QFD) technique. The principal stakeholders for this review

were identified as the local tyre companies and the department’s lecturers. The stakehold-

ers’ expectations from the graduates of the department were determined by direct interviews

using a special questionnaire. The customer needs were categorized, shortened and priori-

tized. The requirements of the two stakeholders were found to be almost the same but with

a different order. The requirements were then converted into quality characteristics. After a

comprehensive analysis on the contents and duration of the courses in the actual curriculum,

taking into consideration stakeholder expectations, a substantial revision was deemed neces-

sary. In conclusion, a new curriculum for the Tyre Technology Department was proposed in

order to meet customer needs. The university senate has approved the new curriculum pro-

posed in this study and the school management has decided to apply the new curriculum asof fall term of the 2002–2003 school year.

Key words: quality function deployment; vocational school of higher education; education;

tyre; curriculum

Abbreviations: KU-KVSHE – Kocaeli University Köseköy Vocational School of Higher

Education, QFD – Quality Function Deployment, VSHEs – Vocational Schools of Higher

Education

1. Introduction

Turkish Higher Education policies were changed two decades ago so as

to meet the qualified manpower needs of industry and a number of Voca-tional Schools of Higher Education (VSHEs) were opened. Today, while

companies are unable to fill vacancies for qualified technicians, a majority

of students graduating from VSHEs are either unemployed or working in

unrelated fields.

∗ Address for Correspondence: Department of Chemical Engineering, Engineering

Faculty, Kocaeli University, 41040 Kocaeli, Turkey. Tel: +90.262.335 11 68/ext.1246; Fax:

+90.262.335 52 41. Email: [email protected]

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508 AYŞE AYTAÇ AND VELI DENIZ

The most fundamental function of the two-year VSHEs is vocationaleducation. The employer gives a new employee in any kind of industry ori-

entation and on-the-job training. If their school curriculum matches the

job requirements, the graduates adapt quickly to the workplace. For this

reason, companies, which expect to employ the graduates of VSHEs, are

expected to be involved in all phases of VSHE education. However, this

partnership and cooperation amongst industries and universities is often

non-existent. The authors feel the Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

technique is an effective tool for overcoming this difficulty.

QFD is a management technique for comprehending the ‘Voice of the

Customer’ and enables a translation of the customer requirements into the

appropriate quality characteristics. Its use facilitates the process of concur-rent engineering and encourages teamwork while working towards a com-

mon goal of ensuring customer satisfaction. QFD also provides the means

for inter-functional planning and communications.

In this paper, the curriculum of the Köseköy Vocational School of

Higher Education for Tyre Technology (KU-KVSHE) at Kocaeli Univer-

sity has been reviewed and evaluated by the QFD technique.

2. QFD review of the Tyre Technology Curriculum

This technique was first applied to education at the beginning of the 1990s.

One of the earliest uses of QFD in studies in education was done by

Ermer at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Wisconsin , Madison in 1991. In this study, the requirements of custom-

ers-students, academic staff and industry were analyzed separately (Ermer,

1995). QFD has been used by different authors for the improvement of

quality in different engineering departments of universities (Köksal and

Eğitman, 1998; Owlia and Aspinwal, 1998;) and for college textbook design

(Sheppard, et al., 1999; Chen and Chen, 2001). A recent application of

QFD, in a higher education curriculum redesign, has been made at the

Rain Star University, in Scottsdale, Arizona. This curriculum was for a

master’s degree program in acupuncture and oriental medicine (Bier and

Cornesky, 2001).

QFD was used to improve the engineering faculty curriculum (Yetiş,1996) in the first objective Turkish attempt to determine the qualified tech-

nical manning requirements and needs of Turkish industry.

Although different classifications exist in literature for the identification of

the stakeholders in education, in our study, the principal stakeholders were

determined to be the tyre industries and the school faculty. The authors did

not consider the students as stakeholders by reasoning that students use the

curriculum but often lack information regarding the competencies needed in

their vocations and are unable to assess the curriculum from a customer’s point

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QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT IN EDUCATION 509

of view. However, the school faculty should have the competency to evaluatethe vocational and technical courses to be taken by the students. The risk here

occurs if the lecturer-faculty lacks industrial experience, in which case their

priorities and ranking would differ from real-life.

3. Voice of the Stakeholders/Customers

Fifteen local tyre companies of different sizes were selected for the survey.

The total number of employees per company varied between 3 and 1000 peo-

ple. One-on-one interviewing was used for collecting the voice of the stake-

holders. A special questionnaire form having 17 questions was prepared. The

26 intermediate and top level company managers, responsible for personnelselection, and 13 lecturers, at the Tyre Technology Department of the school,

were interviewed for a couple of hours each. The skill and qualification

expectations of the stakeholders from the Tyre Technology Department grad-

uates were collected in their own words. The priority of each customer need

was also asked during the interview. The stakeholders ranked these needs

from 1 to 9 (higher number means higher importance). These 39 interview

questionnaire forms were then analyzed by the QFD team. 325 requirements

were identified. These stakeholder requirements were then categorized, short-

ened, sorted and prioritized taking into consideration the customer’s evalua-

tion. A total of 25 ranked requirements were acquired to become the inputs

of the “House of Quality” as given in Table I.

After the determination of the requirements and their relative impor-tance, the QFD team underwent successive meetings. Each acquired require-

ment was transformed into a quality characteristic, namely into courses. The

QFD team has then determined the quality characteristics that are likely to

affect one or more stakeholder requirements. The desired requirements were

investigated step by step, looking at the current curriculum courses and their

content, so as to decide whether the requirement could be met with the cur-

rent curriculum or not. Whenever the team concluded the impossibility of

meeting the requirements with an existing course, the necessary modification

was done. All the requirements were transferred into quality characteristics

following an extensive analysis of all the courses. The relationship between

requirements and quality characteristics were established and indicated in therelationship matrix. There are different weighting methodologies in literature,

the most widely preferred categories of ‘strong, medium, weak and no rela-

tionship’ with the values of 9, 3, 1 and 0, respectively, were applied. The 1–9

scale represents a geometric progression discriminating heavily against the

weak relationship as opposed to the strong relationship. These weightings

are subjective (Owlia and Aspinwal, 1998).

Since all the quality characteristics were affected positively by each

other, the house of quality roof matrix was not considered. The customer

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Table I. Primary customer requirements and their ranking

Tyre School

companies faculty

Requirements rank rank

Knowledge and competency on production machinery 1 2

operations

Knowledge on raw materials (RM) and RM testing 2 1

Compounding 3 3

Process control and finished product testing 4 4

Foreign language (English) 5 14

Computer literacy (Word-Excel) 6 12Quality systems knowledge 7 8

Practical experience 8 6

Mechanical and dynamic properties of tyres 9 9

Management/Leadership 10 25

Project management 11 22

Management systems 12 23

Teamwork 13 13

Environment, occupational health and safety 14 10

Statistics 15 21

Cost management 16 24

General chemistry 17 7

Time management 18 19

Reporting 19 17

Mathematics 20 16

Polymer chemistry 21 5

Total productive maintenance (TPM) 22 20

Technical drawing 23 15

Occupational laws 24 11

Productivity 25 18

evaluation of the competitive products, i.e, the benchmarking of graduates

from different schools was not done due to a lack of sufficient data. Next,the necessary analysis for the technical difficulties, the necessity of new

lecturers, and the additional cost of financing the improvement of quality

characteristics were done. In our study the school management and faculty

ranked the technical difficulties. The degree of technical difficulty relates to

how hard or easy it is to carry out the quality characteristics. Therefore, it

is common to use a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 denoting the easiest.

In order to determine the ranking of the relative importance of cus-

tomer requirements, the QFD team decided to use a method that would

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Stakeholders/Customer Needs R E L A T I V E I M P O R T A N C E

M a c h i n e r y K n o w l e d g e

M a c h i n e

E l e m e n t s

T i r e P r o d

u c t i o n M a c h i n e s

R a w M a t e r i a l , C o m p o u n d & T i r e T e s t i n g

P r o c e s s

E n g l i s h

C o m p u t e r

Q u a l i t y S

y s t e m s

L a b o r a t o r i e s

T i r e T e c h

n o l o g y

C o m m u n i c a t i o n - M a n a g e m e n t T e c h n i q u e s

P r o j e c t - I

P r o j e c t - I I

E n v i r o n m e n t a l , O c c u p a t i o n a l . H e a l t h a n d S a f e t y

G e n e r a l C

h e m i s t r y

M a t h e m a

t i c s

P o l y m e r C h e m i s t r y

T e c h n i c a l D r a w i n g

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0

1 1

1 2

1 3

1 4

1 5

1 6

1 7

1 8

Stakeholders Requirements

Tire Production Machines 12.6

Raw materials and Testing 12.5

Compounding 12.4

Process Control and Finished Product Testing 10.6

Foreign Language ( English ) 8.6

Computer Literacy (Word - Excel) 7.9

Quality Knowledge 5.2

Practical Experience 3.9

Mechanical and Dynamical Properties of Tire 3.7

Administration/ Leadership 3.5

Project Management 2.9

Management Systems2.8

Team work 2.3

Environment, Health & Safety 1.9

Basic Statistics 1.9

Cost Management 1.1

General Chemistry 1

Time Management 1

Reporting 1

Mathematics Knowledge 0.9

Polymer Chemistry 0.6

Total Productive Maintenance 0.6

Technical Drawing 0.5

Occupational Laws 0.3

Productivity 0.2

Scores 3 8

3 9

1 8 8

2 2 4

3 6 8

7 7

7 4

1 0 0

3 4 6

1 0 3

9 0

1 2 1

1 1 8

2 8

1 2

8 1 0 0

5

RELATIVE IMPORTANCE ( % ) 1 . 9

1 . 9

9 . 2

1 1

. 0

1 8 . 1

3 . 8

3 . 6

4 . 9

1 7

. 0

5 . 1

4 . 4

5 . 9

5 . 8

1 . 4

0 . 6

0 . 4

4 . 9

0 . 2

RANKING 12 12 4 3 1 10 11 8 2 7 9 5 6 13 14 15 8 16

DEGREE OF TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 2 4 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1

New Lecturer necessity ? ( Yes/ No) N N N Y Y N N Y Y N N N N Y N N N N

Additional cost increase ? (Yes/ No) N N N N N N N N Y N N N N N N N N N

Relationship matrices symbols

Strong Relationship : - 9

Medium Relationship : o - 3

Weak Relationship : - 1

Quality characteristics

( COURSES )

Figure 1. House of quality for the curriculum.

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weigh the customer’s view based on the number of employees it had.Therefore, the importance weight each customer had assigned to every

quality characteristic was multiplied with a coefficient. This coefficient was

determined on a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 denoting the least populated com-

pany. These weighted figures were then summarised and normalised to rank

the relative importance of the customer requirements as seen in Figure 1.

4. Discussion and Conclusion

QFD can be used to improve university educational activity at all levels,

from degree program design, to curriculum design, to the design of specific

courses. In this study, the curriculum of the Tyre Technology Departmentof KU-KVSHE has been reviewed by using the QFD technique.

The expectations of the stakeholders from the graduates of the Tyre

Technology Department were determined by direct interviews with a spe-

cial questionnaire. The following observations were also acquired from the

questionnaire:• At the time of the study, only 20 graduates from the Tyre Technol-

ogy Department were found to be employed in the four companies sur-

veyed. This figure is much lower than expected.• Tyre companies would like to initially recruit this department’s grad-

uates for entry level jobs in production (50%), in Laboratories (18%),

and in the Quality Department (16%).• The Tyre companies commonly prefer male workers. Hence, a male

graduate who has completed his compulsory military service will be

employed more readily than a female graduate will.• The main reason for the tyre companies’ preference of the graduates

of this department as workers is their practical experiences in tyre pro-

duction. However, the four companies employing the graduates have

reported that the graduates’ practical experiences were still insufficient

and needed to be improved.• Almost all companies expressed that they definitely will employ the

graduates of this department on condition that their educational qual-

ity would be further improved. Also, the tyre companies would welcome

the establishment of a four-year Tyre Engineering Department.Having constructed the “House of Quality” in Figure 1, it has been shown

that the most important quality characteristics were in the courses named “Pro-

cess” and “Laboratory”. The number of lectures was found to be sufficient by

School Management. However, new lecturers with industrial experience will

be needed for some new courses such as ‘Tyre Raw Material and Compound

Tests’, ‘Process’, ‘QualitySystems’,‘TyreLaboratory’and ‘Environment, Occu-

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pational Health and Safety’. Among these, the only additional cost-incurringcourse was found to be ‘Tyre Laboratory’.

A comprehensive analysis of the contents and duration of the courses in

the actual curriculum, taking into consideration stakeholder expectations,

indicated a substantial need for revision. After a detailed analysis of the

courses, the contents of eight courses were changed and the theoretical

hours of three courses were decreased while the corresponding practical

hours were increased. In conclusion, a new curriculum for the Tyre Tech-

nology Department was proposed in order to meet customer needs.

The university senate has also approved the new curriculum proposed in

this study and the school management has decided to apply the new cur-

riculum as of the fall term of the 2002–2003 school year.The effectiveness of the application of QFD depends on the degree

of satisfaction of all the stakeholders. A preliminary survey done at the

department showed that the faculty was pleased with the new curriculum.

It is difficult to fully satisfy the tyre companies only by preparing a better

curriculum because there are other educational processes, which affect the

overall quality of graduates. These factors have been ranked in the follow-

ing order (Owlia and Aspinwal, 1998):

(1) Delivery and management of programmes of study

(2) Recruitment, appraisal and development of the staff

(3) Design of programmes of study

(4) Guidance and support of students

(5) Admissions

(6) Service support of programmes of study

(7) Assessment of students

Since both the quality of the product and the competencies of the grad-

uates depend on other educational processes, these other processes should

also be similarly investigated. The new curriculum is being applied at the

department now. The school faculty is very happy with the new curriculum.

However, the determination of the satisfaction of the tyre producers needs

at least 3–4 years because the students have to graduate and be employed

for a while. An evaluation is planned at that time. The noted effects of

the new curriculum should also be verified by repeating this study amongst

similar tyre companies. This is planned as the next step.In conclusion, the QFD technique can be used to improve, not only all

levels of university educational activities, from degree program design, to

curriculum, to the satisfaction of students but, in a similar way, also all

similar levels of high school educational activities.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Ferial Arnas-Işık from the Industrial Engineer-

ing Dept. for her valuable comments on the manuscript.

References

Bier, I. D & Cornesky, R. (2001). Using QFD to construct a higher education curriculum,

Quality Progress 64–68.

Chen, J. & Chen, C. J. (2001). QFD-based technical textbook evaluation-procedure and a

case study. Journal of Industrial Technology 18(1): 1–8.

Ermer, D. S. (1995). Using QFD becomes an educational experience for students and faculty.

Quality Progress 28(5): 131–136.

Köksal, G. & Eğitman, A. (1998). Planning and design of industrial engineering educationquality. Selected papers from the 22nd ICC & IE Conference, Computers in Industrial

Engineering, Vol.35, No 3–4, pp 639–642, Great Britain.

Owlia, M. S. & Aspinwal, E. M. (1998). Application of QFD for the improvement of quality

in an engineering department. European Journal of Engineering Education 23: 105–115.

Sheppard, S., Demsetz, L. & Hayton, J. (1999). Engineering practice and textbook design.

29th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Puerto Rico.

Yetiş, N. (1996). Expectations of industry from engineering education. Department of Indus-

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