A Multi-Enterprise Quality Function Deployment Paradigm with Unstructured Decision-Making in Linguistic Contexts

Abstract

This paper presents an operational framework of unstructured decision-making approach involving quality function deployment (QFD) in an uncertain linguistic context. Firstly, QFD is extended to the multi-enterprise paradigm in a real-world manufacturing environment. Secondly, hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTSs), which facilitate the management and handling of information equivocality, are designed to construct a house of quality (HoQ) in the product planning process. The technique of computing with words is applied to bridge the gap between mechanisms of the human brain and machine processes with fuzzy linguistic term sets. Thirdly, a multi-enterprise QFD pattern is formulated as an unstructured decision-making problem for alternative infrastructure project selection in a manufacturing organization. The inter-relationships of cooperative partners are directly matched with a back propagation neural network (BPNN) to construct the multi-enterprise manufacturing network. The resilience of the manufacturing organization is considered by formulating an outranking method on the basis of HFLTSs to decide on infrastructure project alternatives. Finally, a real-world example, namely, the prototype manufacturing of an automatic transmission for a vehicle, is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed decision-making approach.