Evaluation of customer requirements and sustainability requirements through the application of fuzzy analytic hierarchy process

Abstract

The preferences of customers for environmental friendly products in the recent times reflect their changing desire towards a clean and green planet. Manufacturers are now keen on fulfilling this requirement by utilizing innovative tools and techniques in product development that help them to design sustainable products. Many of the existing tools and techniques in sustainable product development consider sustainability requirements as part of customer requirements. This may reduce the importance of sustainability requirements over customer requirements. In addition, the tools that reckon customer requirements and sustainability requirements separately, do not weigh them based on their importance. Some other tools do not ponder all the three dimensions of sustainable development namely environmental, social and economic. A new tool named ‘Customer and Sustainability Requirements Evaluation Matrix’ (CSRE Matrix) that evaluates ‘Customer Requirements’ and ‘Sustainability Requirements’ separately during new product development is presented in this paper. A case study has been conducted in an umbrella manufacturing industry for explaining the usefulness of the CSRE Matrix and the results have been reported.