Abstract: Building house of quality (HOQ) is of the fundamental and strategic importance in quality function deployment (QFD). To avoid inconsistent cases in building HOQ and facilitate applications of HOQ, according to a unified 10-Step model for building HOQ which contains the frequently used HOQ’s elements, the update-to-date researches for all the elements are surveyed step by step, and the deficiencies in the researches of every step are pointed out. It is pointed out that the fuzzy, vague and incomplete characteristics in building HOQ arise mainly from the following aspects: the QFD process involves various inputs often in the form of linguistics data; engineering characteristics (ECs) have correlations between them; formal mechanisms for translating customer requirements into ECs are lacking. According to the deficiencies in the researches of every step, the corresponding research directions are discussed. Finally, it is indicated that the researches on building HOQ still cannot fulfill actual demands from product design, and it is urgent to make a great breakthrough.

Key words: Customer requirement, Engineering characteristic, House of quality, Quality function deployment