A fuzzy group decision-making model with risk-taking attitudes in quality function deployment

Abstract

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a process for determining customer requirements and translating them into the target design. A rich understanding of the customer requirements is captured from a group of customers, while the relationship between customer requirements and technical measures is defined through the project team. Ordinarily, a group decision-making process is filled with fuzziness and lack of preciseness because of diverse and/or even subjective views. Apparently, the importance weight of each customer requirement and the relationship between customer requirements and technical measures are evaluated by a group of people with imprecision and fuzziness. Furthermore, different people tend to reflect diverse risk-taking attitudes, such as optimistic, neutral, and conservative attitudes, in making decisions. Under the conditions, a fuzzy group decision-making model with risk-taking attitudes can be used in QFD to manage and resolve a group decision-making process when the information is ambiguous and vague. Besides, an example is presented as well as the algorithm steps to illustrate this fuzzy group decision-making model with risk-taking attitudes can be effectively applied in QFD including customer requirements at the two-level hierarchy to accurately and convincingly make decisions and determine the importance of each technical measure with various risk-taking attitudes of the decision-makers.