Development of a TQM-based Framework for Product Infant Failure Assessment

Abstract

Product infant failures have been traced to the product development and production stage. Researchers and practitioners have opined that total quality management (TQM) can be used to properly managed these failures. While their suggestions have helped in this regard, there is limited information on how to scientifically aggregate criteria that can be used to specifically identify the most suitable TQM technique for product infant failure improvement, especially at the development stage. Hence, this study proposes a fuzzy-based multi-criteria framework for this problem. The framework uses intuitionistic fuzzy set to handle vague and imprecise judgment and Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) to rank selected TQM techniques. Real-world data sets were used to evaluate the framework performance, while TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) was used to validate the framework performance. Based on the results obtained, the IFWG-VIKOR and TOPSIS methods rank the most and least suitable TQM practices as TM4 and TM11, respectively. The framework can be used to provides insights into the management of techniques that can address infant product failure issues at the early stage of product development. Â