Fuzzy measurable house of quality and quality function deployment for fuzzy regression estimation problem

In present competitive environment, it is necessary for companies to evaluate design time and effort at the early stage of product development. However, there is somewhat lacking in systemic analytical methods for product design time (PDT). For this end, this paper explores an intelligent method to evaluate the PDT. At the early development stage, designers are short of sufficient product information and have difficulty in determining PDT by subjective evaluation. Thus, a fuzzy measurable house of quality (FM-HOQ) model is proposed to provide measurable engineering information. Quality function deployment (QFD) is combined with a mapping pattern of ‘‘function? principle? structure’’ to extract product characteristics from customer demands. Then, a fuzzy support vector regression machine (FSVRM) model is built to fuse data and realize the estimation of PDT, which makes use of fuzzy comprehensive evaluation to simplify structure. In a word, the whole estimation method consists of four steps: time factors identification, product characteristics extraction by QFD and function mapping pattern, FSVRM learning, and PDT estimation. Finally, to illustrate the procedure of the estimation method, the case of injection mold design is studied. The results of experiments show that the fuzzy method is feasible and effective. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.