A fuzzy expected value-based goal programing model for product planning using quality function deployment

Abstract

Product planning is one of four important processes in new product development using quality function deployment (QFD), which is a widely used customer-driven approach. In this article, a hierarchical framework for product planning using QFD is developed. To tackle the fuzziness in functional relationships between customer requirements and engineering characteristics (ECs) in product planning, the least squares method is incorporated into fuzzy regression to investigate those functional relationships, by which a more central tendency can be obtained. Furthermore, a fuzzy expected value-based goal programing model is proposed to specify target values of ECs. Different from some fuzzy product planning approaches for QFD, the proposed programing model has unambiguous interpretations. An illustrated example of a quality improvement problem of emulsification dynamite-packing machine design is given to demonstrate the application and performance of the proposed approach.

Keywords:

• Product planning
• Quality function deployment
• Fuzzy linear regression
• Least squares regression

Acknowledgements

The work described in this article was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project no. CityU1028/99E), the National Nature Science Foundation of Chinese (Project no. NSFC70471028) and the funds of Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET) of MOE.