Application of Quality Function Deployment for the development of an organic product Jaqueline de Fátima Cardoso a , Nelson Casarotto Filho b , Paulo Augusto Cauchick Miguel b,⇑ a Post-graduate Program in Production Engineering, Federal University of Santa Catarina – UFSC, Brazil b Department of Production and Systems Engineering, Federal University of Santa Catarina – UFSC, Brazil article info Article history: Received 24 September 2013 Received in revised form 14 September 2014 Accepted 29 September 2014 Available online 18 October 2014 Keywords: Quality Function Deployment QFD Product development Organic food abstract The application of the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method to develop food products has been reported in a number of studies. Nevertheless, QFD was originally designed for other industrial sectors, and as such, certain adjustments are necessary for an effective application in the food sector. In this con- text, this study aims at demonstrating an application of QFD in the development of an organic product. There has been growing global demand for this type of product in recent years. This type of QFD appli- cation is not empirically consolidated in the literature. Thus, this study might be considered a pilot work. A QFD conceptual model consisting of four matrices was constructed to develop an organic fruit jelly. The main adaptation is in the first matrix, which includes the key players in the supply chain. As food’s ingre- dients have natural variations in composition, the interactions among the ingredients are to be consid- ered. In addition, the influence of the production processes on the product’s functional properties and the effects of the supply chain on the ingredients ensure that this type of product development has dif- ferent variables compared to other QFD applications for non-food products. Therefore, the conceptual model used in this study may serve in the development of other food products. This study asserts that the element of socio-environmental responsibility is essential for developing an organic product because this dimension comprised one-third of the relative weight of the planned quality. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction In the 1960s, companies in Japan exhibited strong growth, par- ticularly in the automotive sector, with constant changes to existing vehicle models and new product launches (Akao, 1990, 1996; Carnevalli, Sassi, & Cauchick Miguel, 2004). This growth generated the need for a method that would assure product quality in all phases of the new product development process. Studies performed in Japan to meet this need resulted in a method called Quality Function Deployment – QFD (Akao, 1996). The purpose of QFD is to translate the quality requirements from customers into the attributes of a product; however, it can also be used to develop services (Carnevalli & Cauchick Miguel, 2008). The application of QFD improves product reliability, reduces design time (Devadasan, Kathiravan, & Thirunavukkarasu, 2006), and increases customer satisfaction (Carnevalli, Cauchick Miguel, & Calarge, 2010; Lager, 2005). Seeing the benefits of its application, QFD was adopted by sev- eral other countries and was introduced in the USA and Europe in the 1980s. Although QFD has been used in the food industry since 1987, the published examples are relatively limited (Benner, Linnemann, Jongen, & Folstar, 2003; Hofmeister, 1991). In Brazil, the method was only just introduced in the 1990s (Carnevalli et al., 2004). At that time, the method was introduced in a food and packaging company (Sadia S.A.), and there are reports of QFD applications in the industrial sector in Brazil since 1995 (Cheng, 2003). It is worth mentioning that the production of and market for organic foods have expanded internationally and in Brazil since the 1990s (Guivant, 2003). The global demand for organic food has risen because people are more aware of the health impacts of chemical residues in foods (Arbos, de Freitas, Stertz, & Carvalho, 2010). Similarly, other researchers (e.g., Lobley, Butler, & Reed, 2009; Louden & Macrae, 2010; Maxey, 2006; Retamales, 2011; Trauger, 2007) argue that the demand for organic foods is growing fast. Moreover, Demiryurek (2010) highlights that the growing consumer demand for organic foods has led to the devel- opment of international trade in organic agricultural products. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2014.09.012 0950-3293/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Campus Universitário Trindade, Caixa Postal 476 – 88040-900 Florianópolis, SC, Brazil. Tel.: +55 48 3721 7039. E-mail addresses: jaquelinecardoso@yahoo.com.br (J. de Fátima Cardoso), casarotto@deps.ufsc.br (N. Casarotto Filho), paulo.cauchick@ufsc.br (P.A. Cauchick Miguel). Food Quality and Preference 40 (2015) 180–190 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Food Quality and Preference journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodqual