An integrated QFD and FMEA method under the co-opetitional relationship for product upgrading

Abstract

Improving customer satisfaction is as important as reducing risk associated with product upgrades. The quality function deployment (QFD), as a customer-centric tool, is widely used for product improvement. The failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) method is recognized as a reliability management tool. Considering the need to eliminate risks and meet customer expectations, building an integrated QFD-FMEA framework is useful for product upgrading. To enhance the performance, the QFD and FMEA methods are improved. First, the base criterion method (BCM) is used to derive the CR weights in the QFD method and RFs in the FMEA method. Second, the combined compromise solution (CoCoSo) method and interactive multi-criteria decision making (TODIM- Portuguese acronym) methods are utilized to derive the priority of TCs and FMs, respectively. Third, the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set (IVIFS) is used to express the expert evaluation. Moreover, given that co-opetitional relationship exist in firms and lead to opinion interactions, the improved Hegselmann-Krause (HK) model is utilized in our improved method to stimulate opinion interaction under different competitive states in different phases. Finally, a case study is presented to validate the improved method, and its superiority is demonstrated through sensitivity and comparative analysis.