Quality Function Deployment in Education: A ... - Semantic Scholar

Quality & Quantity (2005) 39:507–514 DOI 10.1007/s11135-004-6814-8

© Springer 2005

Quality Function Deployment in Education: A Curriculum Review AYS¸E AYTAC ¸ and VELI DENIZ∗ Department of Chemical Engineering, Engineering Faculty, Kocaeli University 41040 Kocaeli, Turkey.

Abstract. The curriculum of the Tyre Technology Department at the Kocaeli University ¨ oy ¨ Vocational School of Higher Education (KU-KVSHE) has been reviewed by using Kosek the quality function deployment (QFD) technique. The principal stakeholders for this review were identified as the local tyre companies and the department’s lecturers. The stakeholders’ expectations from the graduates of the department were determined by direct interviews using a special questionnaire. The customer needs were categorized, shortened and prioritized. The requirements of the two stakeholders were found to be almost the same but with a different order. The requirements were then converted into quality characteristics. After a comprehensive analysis on the contents and duration of the courses in the actual curriculum, taking into consideration stakeholder expectations, a substantial revision was deemed necessary. In conclusion, a new curriculum for the Tyre Technology Department was proposed in order to meet customer needs. The university senate has approved the new curriculum proposed in this study and the school management has decided to apply the new curriculum as of fall term of the 2002–2003 school year. Key words: quality function deployment; vocational school of higher education; education; tyre; curriculum ¨ oy ¨ Vocational School of Higher Abbreviations: KU-KVSHE – Kocaeli University Kosek Education, QFD – Quality Function Deployment, VSHEs – Vocational Schools of Higher Education

1. Introduction Turkish Higher Education policies were changed two decades ago so as to meet the qualified manpower needs of industry and a number of Vocational Schools of Higher Education (VSHEs) were opened. Today, while companies are unable to fill vacancies for qualified technicians, a majority of students graduating from VSHEs are either unemployed or working in unrelated fields. ∗

Address for Correspondence: Department of Chemical Engineering, Engineering Faculty, Kocaeli University, 41040 Kocaeli, Turkey. Tel: +90.262.335 11 68/ext.1246; Fax: +90.262.335 52 41. Email: [email protected]

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AYS¸E AYTAC ¸ AND VELI DENIZ

The most fundamental function of the two-year VSHEs is vocational education. The employer gives a new employee in any kind of industry orientation and on-the-job training. If their school curriculum matches the job requirements, the graduates adapt quickly to the workplace. For this reason, companies, which expect to employ the graduates of VSHEs, are expected to be involved in all phases of VSHE education. However, this partnership and cooperation amongst industries and universities is often non-existent. The authors feel the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) technique is an effective tool for overcoming this difficulty. QFD is a management technique for comprehending the ‘Voice of the Customer’ and enables a translation of the customer requirements into the appropriate quality characteristics. Its use facilitates the process of concurrent engineering and encourages teamwork while working towards a common goal of ensuring customer satisfaction. QFD also provides the means for inter-functional planning and communications. ¨ oy ¨ Vocational School of In this paper, the curriculum of the Kosek Higher Education for Tyre Technology (KU-KVSHE) at Kocaeli University has been reviewed and evaluated by the QFD technique. 2. QFD review of the Tyre Technology Curriculum This technique was first applied to education at the beginning of the 1990s. One of the earliest uses of QFD in studies in education was done by Ermer at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Wisconsin , Madison in 1991. In this study, the requirements of customers-students, academic staff and industry were analyzed separately (Ermer, 1995). QFD has been used by different authors for the improvement of ¨ quality in different engineering departments of universities (Koksal and E˘gitman, 1998; Owlia and Aspinwal, 1998;) and for college textbook design (Sheppard, et al., 1999; Chen and Chen, 2001). A recent application of QFD, in a higher education curriculum redesign, has been made at the Rain Star University, in Scottsdale, Arizona. This curriculum was for a master’s degree program in acupuncture and oriental medicine (Bier and Cornesky, 2001). QFD was used to improve the engineering faculty curriculum (Yetis¸, 1996) in the first objective Turkish attempt to determine the qualified technical manning requirements and needs of Turkish industry. Although different classifications exist in literature for the identification of the stakeholders in education, in our study, the principal stakeholders were determined to be the tyre industries and the school faculty. The authors did not consider the students as stakeholders by reasoning that students use the curriculum but often lack information regarding the competencies needed in their vocations and are unable to assess the curriculum from a customer’s point

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of view. However, the school faculty should have the competency to evaluate the vocational and technical courses to be taken by the students. The risk here occurs if the lecturer-faculty lacks industrial experience, in which case their priorities and ranking would differ from real-life. 3. Voice of the Stakeholders/Customers Fifteen local tyre companies of different sizes were selected for the survey. The total number of employees per company varied between 3 and 1000 people. One-on-one interviewing was used for collecting the voice of the stakeholders. A special questionnaire form having 17 questions was prepared. The 26 intermediate and top level company managers, responsible for personnel selection, and 13 lecturers, at the Tyre Technology Department of the school, were interviewed for a couple of hours each. The skill and qualification expectations of the stakeholders from the Tyre Technology Department graduates were collected in their own words. The priority of each customer need was also asked during the interview. The stakeholders ranked these needs from 1 to 9 (higher number means higher importance). These 39 interview questionnaire forms were then analyzed by the QFD team. 325 requirements were identified. These stakeholder requirements were then categorized, shortened, sorted and prioritized taking into consideration the customer’s evaluation. A total of 25 ranked requirements were acquired to become the inputs of the “House of Quality” as given in Table I. After the determination of the requirements and their relative importance, the QFD team underwent successive meetings. Each acquired requirement was transformed into a quality characteristic, namely into courses. The QFD team has then determined the quality characteristics that are likely to affect one or more stakeholder requirements. The desired requirements were investigated step by step, looking at the current curriculum courses and their content, so as to decide whether the requirement could be met with the current curriculum or not. Whenever the team concluded the impossibility of meeting the requirements with an existing course, the necessary modification was done. All the requirements were transferred into quality characteristics following an extensive analysis of all the courses. The relationship between requirements and quality characteristics were established and indicated in the relationship matrix. There are different weighting methodologies in literature, the most widely preferred categories of ‘strong, medium, weak and no relationship’ with the values of 9, 3, 1 and 0, respectively, were applied. The 1–9 scale represents a geometric progression discriminating heavily against the weak relationship as opposed to the strong relationship. These weightings are subjective (Owlia and Aspinwal, 1998). Since all the quality characteristics were affected positively by each other, the house of quality roof matrix was not considered. The customer

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Table I. Primary customer requirements and their ranking

Requirements Knowledge and competency on production machinery operations Knowledge on raw materials (RM) and RM testing Compounding Process control and finished product testing Foreign language (English) Computer literacy (Word-Excel) Quality systems knowledge Practical experience Mechanical and dynamic properties of tyres Management/Leadership Project management Management systems Teamwork Environment, occupational health and safety Statistics Cost management General chemistry Time management Reporting Mathematics Polymer chemistry Total productive maintenance (TPM) Technical drawing Occupational laws Productivity

Tyre companies rank

School faculty rank

1

2

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

1 3 4 14 12 8 6 9 25 22 23 13 10 21 24 7 19 17 16 5 20 15 11 18

evaluation of the competitive products, i.e, the benchmarking of graduates from different schools was not done due to a lack of sufficient data. Next, the necessary analysis for the technical difficulties, the necessity of new lecturers, and the additional cost of financing the improvement of quality characteristics were done. In our study the school management and faculty ranked the technical difficulties. The degree of technical difficulty relates to how hard or easy it is to carry out the quality characteristics. Therefore, it is common to use a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 denoting the easiest. In order to determine the ranking of the relative importance of customer requirements, the QFD team decided to use a method that would

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1 Machinery Knowledge

2 Machine Elements

3 Tire Production Machines

4 Raw Material, Compound & Tire Testing

5 Process

6 English

7 Computer

8 Quality Systems

9 Laboratories

10 Tire Technology

11 Communication -Management Techniques

12 Project - I

13 Project - II

14 Environmental, Occupational. Health and Safety

15 General Chemistry

16 Mathematics

17 Polymer Chemistry

18 Technical Drawing

1.9 38

1.9 39

9.2 188

11.0 224

18.1 368

3.8 77

3.6 74

4.9 100

17.0 346

5.1 103

4.4 90

5.9 121

5.8 118

1.4 28

0.6 12

0.4 8

4.9 100

0.2 5

Relationship matrices symbols Strong Relationship : - 9 Medium Relationship : o- 3 Weak Relationship : - 1

Stakeholders/Customer Needs Stakeholders Requirements Tire Production Machines Raw materials and Testing Compounding Process Control and Finished Product Testing

Foreign Language ( English ) Computer Literacy (Word - Excel) Quality Knowledge Practical Experience Mechanical and Dynamical Properties of Tire

Administration/ Leadership Project Management Management Systems Team work Environment, Health & Safety Basic Statistics Cost Management General Chemistry Time Management Reporting Mathematics Knowledge Polymer Chemistry Total Productive Maintenance Technical Drawing Occupational Laws Productivity Scores RELATIVE IMPORTANCE ( % ) RANKING DEGREE OF TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

New Lecturer necessity ?

( Yes/ No)

Additional cost increase ?

(Yes/ No)

RELATIVE IMPORTANCE

Quality characteristics ( COURSES )

12.6 12.5 12.4 10.6 8.6 7.9 5.2 3.9 3.7 3.5 2.9 2.8 2.3 1.9 1.9 1.1 1 1 1 0.9 0.6 0.6 0.5 0.3 0.2

12 12 4 3 1 10 11 8 2 7 9 5 6 13 14 15 8 16 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 2 4 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1

N N N Y Y N N Y Y N N N N Y N N N N N N N N N N N N Y N N N N N N N N N

Figure 1. House of quality for the curriculum.

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weigh the customer’s view based on the number of employees it had. Therefore, the importance weight each customer had assigned to every quality characteristic was multiplied with a coefficient. This coefficient was determined on a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 denoting the least populated company. These weighted figures were then summarised and normalised to rank the relative importance of the customer requirements as seen in Figure 1. 4. Discussion and Conclusion QFD can be used to improve university educational activity at all levels, from degree program design, to curriculum design, to the design of specific courses. In this study, the curriculum of the Tyre Technology Department of KU-KVSHE has been reviewed by using the QFD technique. The expectations of the stakeholders from the graduates of the Tyre Technology Department were determined by direct interviews with a special questionnaire. The following observations were also acquired from the questionnaire: • At the time of the study, only 20 graduates from the Tyre Technology Department were found to be employed in the four companies surveyed. This figure is much lower than expected. • Tyre companies would like to initially recruit this department’s graduates for entry level jobs in production (50%), in Laboratories (18%), and in the Quality Department (16%). • The Tyre companies commonly prefer male workers. Hence, a male graduate who has completed his compulsory military service will be employed more readily than a female graduate will. • The main reason for the tyre companies’ preference of the graduates of this department as workers is their practical experiences in tyre production. However, the four companies employing the graduates have reported that the graduates’ practical experiences were still insufficient and needed to be improved. • Almost all companies expressed that they definitely will employ the graduates of this department on condition that their educational quality would be further improved. Also, the tyre companies would welcome the establishment of a four-year Tyre Engineering Department. Having constructed the “House of Quality” in Figure 1, it has been shown that the most important quality characteristics were in the courses named “Process” and “Laboratory”. The number of lectures was found to be sufficient by School Management. However, new lecturers with industrial experience will be needed for some new courses such as ‘Tyre Raw Material and Compound Tests’, ‘Process’, ‘Quality Systems’, ‘Tyre Laboratory’ and ‘Environment, Occu-


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pational Health and Safety’. Among these, the only additional cost-incurring course was found to be ‘Tyre Laboratory’. A comprehensive analysis of the contents and duration of the courses in the actual curriculum, taking into consideration stakeholder expectations, indicated a substantial need for revision. After a detailed analysis of the courses, the contents of eight courses were changed and the theoretical hours of three courses were decreased while the corresponding practical hours were increased. In conclusion, a new curriculum for the Tyre Technology Department was proposed in order to meet customer needs. The university senate has also approved the new curriculum proposed in this study and the school management has decided to apply the new curriculum as of the fall term of the 2002–2003 school year. The effectiveness of the application of QFD depends on the degree of satisfaction of all the stakeholders. A preliminary survey done at the department showed that the faculty was pleased with the new curriculum. It is difficult to fully satisfy the tyre companies only by preparing a better curriculum because there are other educational processes, which affect the overall quality of graduates. These factors have been ranked in the following order (Owlia and Aspinwal, 1998): (1) Delivery and management of programmes of study (2) Recruitment, appraisal and development of the staff (3) Design of programmes of study (4) Guidance and support of students (5) Admissions (6) Service support of programmes of study (7) Assessment of students Since both the quality of the product and the competencies of the graduates depend on other educational processes, these other processes should also be similarly investigated. The new curriculum is being applied at the department now. The school faculty is very happy with the new curriculum. However, the determination of the satisfaction of the tyre producers needs at least 3–4 years because the students have to graduate and be employed for a while. An evaluation is planned at that time. The noted effects of the new curriculum should also be verified by repeating this study amongst similar tyre companies. This is planned as the next step. In conclusion, the QFD technique can be used to improve, not only all levels of university educational activities, from degree program design, to curriculum, to the satisfaction of students but, in a similar way, also all similar levels of high school educational activities.

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Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to Ferial Arnas-Is¸ık from the Industrial Engineering Dept. for her valuable comments on the manuscript. References Bier, I. D & Cornesky, R. (2001). Using QFD to construct a higher education curriculum, Quality Progress 64–68. Chen, J. & Chen, C. J. (2001). QFD-based technical textbook evaluation-procedure and a case study. Journal of Industrial Technology 18(1): 1–8. Ermer, D. S. (1995). Using QFD becomes an educational experience for students and faculty. Quality Progress 28(5): 131–136. ¨ Koksal, G. & E˘gitman, A. (1998). Planning and design of industrial engineering education quality. Selected papers from the 22nd ICC & IE Conference, Computers in Industrial Engineering, Vol.35, No 3–4, pp 639–642, Great Britain. Owlia, M. S. & Aspinwal, E. M. (1998). Application of QFD for the improvement of quality in an engineering department. European Journal of Engineering Education 23: 105–115. Sheppard, S., Demsetz, L. & Hayton, J. (1999). Engineering practice and textbook design. 29th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Puerto Rico. Yetis¸, N. (1996). Expectations of industry from engineering education. Department of Industrial Engineering, Marmara University. Istanbul 1–44.