USING QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT AS A DECISION SUPPORT TOOL IN FOOD PRODUCT QUALITY MANAGEMENT
Petronela Švikruhová, Zuzana Kapsdorferová, Dominika Čeryová
Abstract: This study examines the application of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) as a structured decision-support framework for environmentally oriented food product development, with particular emphasis on the integration of consumer-derived quality requirements, technical characteristics, and quantitative environmental indicators. Unlike prior QFD applications relying on qualitative environmental proxies, the present study incorporates a simplified cradle-to-gate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to provide a more rigorous and quantitatively grounded basis for sustainability-related trade-off analysis. Blind sensory evaluation conducted with a Generation Z consumer panel (n = 100) identified key customer requirements - taste intensity, creaminess, freshness perception, aftertaste, and overall liking - which were systematically mapped to controllable technical characteristics within an extended House of Quality (HOQ). The analysis reveals that taste intensity and overall liking are the primary drivers of consumer acceptance across both conventional dairy and plant-based yogurt-type products, with fermentation time emerging as the most strategically significant controllable process parameter. The HOQ correlation structure further exposes critical trade-offs between compositional intensification - particularly fat content - and carbon footprint reduction objectives, demonstrating the framework's capacity to surface consequential managerial dilemmas. These findings contribute to the quality management and decision sciences literature by extending QFD beyond design-centric applications toward a comprehensive managerial decision-support tool that systematically reconciles consumer satisfaction with sustainability objectives in food product development contexts.
Keywords: QFD, House of Quality, plant-based yogurt, life cycle assessment, decision support, sustainability, sensory evaluation, food product development
DOI: 10.24874/IJQR20.03-10
Recieved: 25.02.2026 Accepted: 04.08.2026 UDC:
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