Quality function deployment in emergency planning and management

Abstract

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is an engineering tool for organizing and ranking information into matrix form in order to understand the attributes or actions that are needed to achieve a common goal, and to align cross-functional teams strategically to quickly and efficiently meet that common goal. Although this tool has been used primarily in the manufacturing world for product or process planning, it can easily and effectively be applied at various levels within the emergency planning/response environment as an aid to prioritize critical resources. Applications will be discussed at the personal or user level, local emergency response level, state and federal levels. By utilizing QFD, these entities will be better able to address emergency situations. QFD can also be a cornerstone to continuously improve readiness to handle the crucial time just prior to, and just after, the emergency occurs.