An integrated fuzzy QFD and fuzzy goal programming approach for global facility location-allocation problem

Companies pursuing extension of their activities and new companies in establishment phase are using various concepts and techniques to consider location decision, because location greatly a®ects both ̄xed and variable costs and on the overall pro ̄t of the company. This paper suggests a new use of quality function deployment (QFD) for facility location selection problem instead of applying it to traditional product quality promotion. Fuzzy sets concept is also incorporated to deal with imprecise nature of the linguistic judgments of decision makers. First, fuzzy QFD as a stand-alone approach is presented to address international facility location selection decision. To consider resource limitations and operational constraints, fuzzy goal programming is combined with fuzzy quality function deployment to present a developed International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making Vol. 13, No. 2 (2014) 263–290 °c World Scienti ̄c Publishing Company DOI: 10.1142/S0219622014500400