QFD Employment for a New Product Design in a Mineral Water Company

In this paper, quality function deployment (QFD) approach and knowledge management are applied to understand the customer needs in order to select suitable characteristics and their “weights”, for a new product design, in a mineral water company. Then, this knowledge is used to develop a new soft drink, enabling the company to enter the new markets successfully. The presentation shows how achieved experience and continuous improvement are parts of the knowledge management, which fits into the QFD project. The product characteristics in measurable quantities in order to obtain the desired quality of the product have been prescribed. The product is released into the Romanian market with great success.