The Critical To Quality Tree

Usually, an organization is always seeking to improve its strategy for meeting customers’ expectations and developing a product and/or service that helps it to stand out from the competition. To this end, it is necessary to maintain ongoing communications with customers and be aware that their perception of a product and/or service is subjective and involves desires, demands, and expectations based on the product and/or service attributes.

The Critical Quality Tree (CTQ) is a visual layout of the quality indicators, which allow measuring and determining –whether quantitatively or qualitatively– the quality of a product and/or service. To develop the CTQ Tree, an organization needs to identify to the client or user, the critical needs to be met by the product and/or service, quality controllers, and performance requirements. Its design implies classifying priorities of results and removal of features unnecessary to meet customer requirements.

One of the main characteristics of a CTQ Tree is that it derives directly from the Voice of the Customer (VOC), which provides a complete picture of the customer’s actual needs.