Published in Scientific Papers. Series D. Animal Science, Vol. LXIII, Issue 1
Written by Cecilia POP, Gabriela FRUNZĂ, 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 finished product. The purpose of this study was to apply the QFD methodology (House of Quality, HoQ1,) to improve the quality of products in the food industry, taking into account the technological process of obtaining fruit ice cream (the Q product), thus providing a synthetic model. The working method consisted in the participation of a number of 240 ice cream consumers, aged between 20-24 years, who provided the list of consumer requirements, prioritizing and weighting them based on a score from 1 to 5. The following stages were represented by the transposition of consumers' voice in quantifiable technical requirements, their correlation at the "roof" level, establishing the relations between technical measures and the customer's voice by 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 were the amount of fruit added (20.8%), the lack of hazardous additives (20.8%), the creaminess (16.7%) and the lack of ice crystals (16.7%). Thus, in order to meet consumer requirements, the replacement of sugar with maple syrup, artificial stabilizers and emulsifiers with pectin (0.4%) and yolk (0.5%), led to a more nutritious and healthier product, but which will probably have a higher price compared to the products currently available on the market.
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