Published in Scientific Papers. Series D. Animal Science, Vol. LXV, Issue 2
Written by Gabriela FRUNZĂ, Cristina Gabriela RADU-RUSU, Aida ALBU, Ioan Mircea POP
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 to improve the quality of products in the food industry, taking into account the technological process of chicken liver pâté (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 250 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 chicken liver pâté were: the taste (15.63%), the smell (15.63%), the appearance/ color (15.63%), the small amount of saturated lipids/ without added lard (12.5%), the fine texture and spreadable (12.5%), without synthetic colorants and preservatives (12.5%), good price (9.37) and without flavor enhancers (6.24%). Thus, in order to meet consumer requirements, the replacement of sodium nitrite with turmeric powder (Curcuma longa L.), as alternative natural colorant and preservatives (curcumin the principal bioactive substance of turmeric) 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.
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