Information deduction approach through quality function deployment for the quantification of the dependency between design tasks

Abstract

The design structure matrix (DSM) has been widely known as an effective approach for the modelling and analysis of a design process for the manufacture of a product from the perspective of information flow. It provides a formal method to capture and manage the interactions and interdependences among design tasks. Nonetheless, the difficulties in constructing a reliable numerical DSM prevent wider applications of DSM and its derived techniques. In this work, an approach to quantify systematically the dependency between design tasks in a DSM is proposed. The proposed approach aims at estimating the coupling strength of tasks in a DSM by making full use of the information contained in quality function deployment matrices. To realize this, a house of quality matrix is first constructed, followed by transferring the information in the house of quality to an extended design deployment matrix, and then the dependence strength of each task–attribute pair in the extended design deployment matrix is analysed. The details of the proposed approach are presented. The performance of the proposed prototype is illustrated by using a case study on a burn-in system. The results obtained from the case study are discussed.