Livingston Fabrication creates upholstered seat subassemblies for installation in public transport systems. Livingston hired a marketing firm to hold customer focus groups, asking public transportation users what they liked and valued in bus and train seating. These customers indicated the importance of three attributes (Clean, Comfortable, and Up to Date) and rated a dozen existing bus and train system seat- ing designs for these three attributes. Livingston Fabrication has three technical specifications that it believes it might change in the future, and so its engineering department rated the seating in those same bus and train systems according to those specifications. These two sets of ratings produced the following set of correlation coefficients:

The engineers also tested for correlation between the technical specifications, but found that most were near zero, except for the correlation between the thickness and the density of seat cushion foam, which was -0.898.

Questions 

1. Designers at Livingston Fabrication have long complained that selecting fabric for the seats, "was a thankless job. Nobody is ever completely happy." Explain why this table of correlation coefficients partially supports their complaint, at least in terms of picking the number of colors in the fabric pattern.

2. Assume that customers indicated that Comfortable was twice as important as either Clean or Up to Date. Sketch a complete QFD house of quality diagram, organizing all of this information.

3. If Livingston is concerned that its own product is not perceived as Comfortable, what does this analysis suggest it should change about the current seat design?

Transcribed Image Text:

Clean Up to Date Comfortable Thickness of Seat Cushion Foam Number of Colors in Fabric Pattern Density of Seat Cushion Foam -0.653 0.887 0.134 -0.121 -0.753 0.005 0.321 0.284 0.912