Moisture from perspiration collects in and passes through clothing as worn, and the properties of clothing fabrics influence both the collection and passage of this moisture. The selection and measure of moisture properties that relate to comfort in wear has proved to be more difficult than first perceived. Dynamic surface wetness of fabrics has been found to correlate with skin contact comfort in wear for

QFD is a product development and implementation tool to translate the customer′s product requirements into the design of the equipment to make that product, and then into the manufacturing plan to produce that product. QFD ensures that the “voice of the customer” is not lost as plans for changing a product or making a new one proceed from concept generation through to production start‐up. Focuses on steps beyond the house of quality: the process planning and the production planning matrices, and emphasizes the practical application of QFD to new product development. Describes the formation of the QFD team, at Kimberley Clarke Corporation, the strategies used to get around the barriers that existed, the results of the effort of the programme, and the transformation in the use of QFD from a “tool” to “the culture” by which business gets done on this programme.

463chloride itself. Since the hydrated form is about twice as heavy as the anhydrous, an add-on of a few percent cobaltous chloride would-be equivalent to a similar increase in the regain of the fabric. The higher regain would result in a proportionately longer delay time.Note that the shape of the relative humidity curve is different from the shape of the color curve for the cotton and cotton/polyester. However, the curves can only be expected to be the same shape if the two quantities are linearly related, i.e., if the color index is a direct linear function of relative humidity. This cannot really be expected when several phase transitions and a subjective appraisal of color are involved. Certainly part of the difference in behavior between polyester and cotton is attributable to regain. Whether it is all so attributable requires further investigation.An experiment performed on a fabric with high regain but without the pores required for the formation of the films, or one with the pores but with low regain, would be informative.We are pleased to reply to Farnworth's comments on our paper &dquo;Dynamic Surface Wetness of Fabrics in Relation to Clothing Comfort&dquo; published in the July 1985 issue of TRJ. An understanding of how heat and moisture transfer in clothing under actual wearing conditions is sorely needed. Farnworth graciously supplied us with a copy of his manuscript describing in detail the model he used to test our data, and our reply is presented in this context. As pointed out in the comments and in our paper, we have seen sharp differences in the rate at which cobaltous chloride color changes occur at the surface of cotton versus polyester fabrics in going from an initial dry state to a fully moist state. We have certainly inferred that these observations do relate to the local vapor pressure of water at the fabric surface immediately above a simulated sweating skin, but in separate experiments, we have failed to find a contribution from the amount of cobaltous chloride used on color changes (hue), even though there were variations in intensity (chroma) in the Munsell color system. In another set of experiments, we actually measured the vapor pressure of water at the fabric surface receiving moisture from the skin and found a good correlation with the color changes due to cobaltous chloride for the cotton and polyester fabrics. On this basis, therefore, we conclude that the cobaltous chloride measurements are a sufficiently good approximation to the moisture levels at the fabric surface to be used in screening for fiber effects. A paper describing these new findings using a miniature clothing hygrometer is now in preparation.The ultimate challenge in this work stems from the finding that the discomfort in wearing clothing next to the skin arises from the small amounts of moisture collected from the sweating skin. The dynamic surface wetness method and the clothing hygrometer data appear to correlate well with these findings. Although we agree that the effects are probably attributable to conden...