Product design on the basis of fuzzy quality function deployment

In the implementation of quality function deployment (QFD), the determination of the target values of engineering characteristics is a complex decision process with multiple variables and multiple objectives that should trade off, and optimize all kinds of conflicts and constraints. A fuzzy linear programming model (FLP) is proposed. On the basis of the inherent fuzziness of QFD system, triangular fuzzy numbers are used to represent all the relationships and correlations, and then, the functional relationships between the customer needs and engineering characteristics and the functional correlations among the engineering characteristics are determined with the information in the house of quality (HoQ) fully used. The fuzzy linear programming (FLP) model aims to find the optimal target values of the engineering characteristics to maximize the customer satisfaction. Finally, the proposed method is illustrated by a numerical example.