Which of the following is critical for ensuring customer requirements are met throughout the development process?

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is the correct choice as it is a structured method used to ensure that customers' requirements are met throughout the development process. QFD emphasizes translating customer needs (the "voice of the customer") into specific technical requirements and ensuring that design, engineering, and operational activities align with these needs.

The process typically involves using tools such as the House of Quality, which allows teams to prioritize features based on customer desires and quantify how well various design alternatives meet these needs. By actively involving customer feedback early and continuously throughout the development process, QFD helps to minimize the gap between what customers want and what is produced, leading to a more successful product development outcome.

While cost analysis, market analysis, and employee feedback are also important aspects of operations management, they do not specifically focus on the comprehensive translation of customer requirements into product functionalities as effectively as QFD does. These other options serve different purposes: cost analysis reviews financial feasibility, market analysis looks at competitive positioning and sales potential, and employee feedback can provide insights for process improvement. However, none are as critical in ensuring that the actual customer requirements drive product development as is the case with Quality Function Deployment.