Title: Improving the quality of cold merchandising unit: an application of quality function deployment

Authors: Alaa M. Ubaid; Fikri T. Dweiri; Khalid Al Shuhail

Addresses: College of Engineering, Sharjah University, Sharjah, UAE ' College of Engineering, Sharjah University, Sharjah, UAE ' GECECO Consultant Co., Sharjah, UAE

Abstract: Quality of hot and cold merchandisers are an important tool if food is to be held and displayed properly to entice consumers to buy and to drive food to go sale. In this paper, QFD tool used to translate the voice of the customer to technical aspects in order to set an action plan to improve the double door cold merchandising unit. It was found that eliminating the moisture from the door glass, sliding door mechanism durability, and light system durability are the most important requirements, while increasing insulation efficiency, anti moisture solutions, using LED tubes, and electricity fluctuation solution, was found to be the most important technical descriptors. HOQ presented in this work contributed in prioritising company's R&D directions. Further research efforts will be continuing the balance steps of QFD process, other future work suggestions could be using QFD tool to assess voice of the customers for other products.

Keywords: cold merchandising units; quality function deployment; QFD; vertical display chillers; double door sliding; DDS; quality improvement; chilled food; food displays; food cabinets; moisture removal; door glass; sliding doors; sliding mechanism durability; light system durability; insulation efficiency; LED tubes; electricity fluctuation; R&D; research and development.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIE.2016.078637

International Journal of Intelligent Enterprise, 2016 Vol.3 No.3/4, pp.327 - 344

Received: 01 Dec 2015
Accepted: 03 Apr 2016
Published online: 29 Aug 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article