A fuzzy group decision-making approach in quality function deployment

Abstract

Quality function deployment (QFD) is comprised of two major group decision-making processes. One is to collect the customer requirements from a group of customers, whereas the other is to determine the relationship between customer requirements and technical measures by a cross-functional team. Generally, different and/or even subjective opinions are quite often in a group decision-making process due to the limitations of experience and impreciseness. Obviously, the importance of each customer requirement and the relationship between customer requirements and technical measures are determined by a group of people with imprecision and vagueness. Under such circumstances, a fuzzy group decision-making approach can be applied in QFD to deal with a group decision-making process when the information is imprecise and fuzzy. Moreover, an example is provided as well as the computational steps to show this fuzzy group decision-making approach can be effectively used in QFD to make decisions with imprecision and vagueness.