Abstract:
Quality Function Development (QFD) is a systematic approach specific to quality management that facilitates product
development by ensuring consumer requirements meeting ”customer voice”, these being taken into account from the
design phase, then during the entire technological process, being reflected in the quality characteristics of the finished
product. The purpose of this study was to apply the QFD methodology (House of Quality, HoQ) to improve the quality
of products in the food industry, taking into account the technological process of chocolate (designing a new product
that meets the requirements of consumers), thus providing a synthetic model. The working method consisted in the
participation of a number of 200 chocolate consumers, aged between 20-24 years, who provided the list of consumer
requirements, prioritizing and weighting them based on a standardized score from 1 to 5 points. The following stages
were represented by the transposition of consumers' voice in quantifiable technical requirements, their correlation using
predefined symbols, establishing the direction of improving the quality of the new product, assessing current
competition and determination of target values. Following the analysis, the most important consumer requirements for
chocolate were: the taste of cocoa (25%), the flavor (25%), the fine texture (20%), the small amount of sugar (15%) and
an affordable price (15%). Thus, in order to meet consumer requirements, the replacement of sugar with coconut nectar
sugar or dates powder as alternative sweetener led to a healthy product, but which will have a higher price compared to
the products currently available on the market. However, applying the level II/ III of QFD methodology the low cost
was provided by mitigation of price of raw material’s.
