Fuzzy multiple objective programming framework to prioritize design requirements in quality function deployment

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a customer-oriented design tool for developing new or improved products to increase customer satisfaction by integrating marketing, design engineering, manufacturing, and other related functions of an organization. QFD aims to maximize customer satisfaction; however, considerations such as cost budget, technical difficulty, etc. limit the number and the extent of the possible design requirements that can be incorporated into a product. This paper presents a fuzzy multiple objective programming approach that incorporates imprecise and subjective information inherent in the QFD planning process to determine the level of fulfillment of design requirements. Linguistic variables are employed to represent the imprecise design information and the importance degree of each design objective. A real-world application illustrates the proposed fuzzy multiple objective decision analysis. q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.