Quality Function Deployment and Life Cycle Costing: A Systematic Review of Industrial Applications

Abstract

In today’s competitive industrial environment, organizations strive to balance customer satisfaction, product quality, and cost efficiency over a product’s lifecycle. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) provides a structured methodology to translate customer requirements into technical specifications, ensuring that products align closely with market expectations. Life Cycle Costing (LCC), on the other hand, assesses the total cost incurred over a product’s life, including acquisition, operation, maintenance, and disposal. While both methodologies have been individually studied, limited research explores their combined application to optimize both quality and cost. This review systematically examines the literature on QFD and LCC in industrial contexts, highlighting integration opportunities, emerging trends, and practical challenges. It synthesizes studies across manufacturing, construction, logistics, and service sectors, providing insights into how QFD-LCC integration can enhance decision-making, promote sustainable practices, and improve competitiveness. Key findings reveal that while QFD enhances customer-driven design and technical quality, LCC ensures economic viability over the product lifecycle. Integration of the two methodologies enables organizations to prioritize design features that deliver maximum value while minimizing long-term costs. The review identifies research gaps in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), service industries, and digital integration, suggesting future directions for empirical studies, methodological frameworks, and software tools to facilitate QFD-LCC implementation.