An Integrated Approach to Determinate Design Quality Targets in New Products Development Process

The key to improve the competitive ability of manufacturing companies is how to develop high quality product for their customers. So, the selection of product quality and technical parameters is very important for meeting with the customer requirements (CRs). However, the selection process is a complex and difficult task. The aim of this study is to propose a comprehensive decision model to help product designers. Firstly, the analytic network process (ANP) is used to compute the weights of CRs. Then, quality function deployment (QFD), an effective optimization technique, is applied to transform CRs into product design technical characteristics (TCs). Finally, the relationships between CRs and TCs are considered in QFD during the inference process. A numerical example is given to prove the validity of the proposed synthesis methodology through a study of engineering machinery engines.