Fuzzy quality function deployment: determining the distributions of effort dedicated to technical change

A model is presented that develops the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) House of Quality tool into a fuzzy‐set based multi‐criteria decision‐making process to determine the distributions of effort directed toward technical changes. When customers are polled for desired product‐specific attributes, the responses are typically defined by linguistic variables that represent a fuzzy set distribution. Fuzzy sets also define customer perceptions of the product attributes and technical expert opinions about product design criteria relative to marketplace competitors. Therefore, for each technical criterion, the following factors have an effect on the decision to implement change(s): (1) fuzzy sets providing evidence of customer need for attributes; (2) motivation to change to satisfy desired customer attributes; (3) motivation for technical criterion change; and (4) the strength of the relationships between the attributes and the technical criterion. Priority rankings are linked to the distributions of effort to apply in fulfilling continuous product improvement.