Quality Function Deployment Model Research Articles

A customer-driven quality function deployment approach for intelligent product design: A case of automatic-dishwasher

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is one of the very effective customer-driven product development tools. With automatic dishwashers entering the Chinese market, manufacturers can use QFD to develop products that meet the unique Chinese customer requirements and explore the Chinese market. To help manufacturers maximize profits by developing automatic dishwashers to China’s market situation and competitive environment, this paper proposes an improved QFD model considering competitive learning and cost analysis based on market information analysis with Product Life Cycle (PLC) theory. On the one hand, the improved QFD model determines the life cycle stage of the product by analyzing the characteristics of the market. The improvement rate of customer requirements (CRs) determined by competitive learning in different stages has different influence on the importance weights of CRs, so that the new products developed based on design requirements (DRs) converted from CRs can better adapt to the current market environment. On the other hand, the cost strategy will also change according to different PLC stages. In cost analysis, different cost criteria weights will be determined in different life cycle stages to deal with product development risks in different market environments and help enterprises achieve better sustainable development. Finally, we take Chinese HE company’s automatic-dishwasher design as an example to show the specific application of the proposed model. The proposed model identifies the important DRs and their relative importance ranking for the product development. Comparison with existing QFD models shows the ranking obtained through the model is better integrated with market information, enabling the development of products that are better suited to the market, and helping companies to achieve sustainable development.

Development and implementation of digital pedagogical support systems in the context of educational equity

In response to the covid-19 pandemic, the digital strategy of education has become a key pedagogical approach for higher engineering disciplines. In this complex environment, the outcome-oriented higher engineering discipline faces the challenge of educational equity in terms of curriculum design and learning outcome assessment for its online engineering practical courses. In order to solve this problem, this study develops a digital teaching assistant system to facilitate the reform of educational equity in higher engineering disciplines. The teaching and learning functions of the system aim to support the interaction between teachers and students in the teaching process and the visual display of learning outcomes, and its intelligent evaluation and analysis function is based on the multi-criterion group decision-making model of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) combined with t-test to realize the evaluation of course learning outcomes. The results show that the academic performance of this system is significantly better than that of other similar systems. The statistical results of the teacher-student satisfaction survey of the two systems show that the teacher-student interaction and multi-dimensional learning evaluation analysis report function provided by the system are the most highly recognized, and the system also has better educational equity in resource recommendation, interaction and collaboration, learning achievement display and learning achievement evaluation, etc. In addition, the system is more in line with the teaching characteristics of higher engineering disciplines, which can provide effective assistance for teachers of higher engineering disciplines to improve teaching plan and cultivate students’ disciplinary practicality, consequently creating favorable conditions for the establishment of teaching equity.

KANO+QFD 모델을 기반으로 IoT 반려묘 음수기의 디지털 터미널 디자인 방향 제안

The pet supplies market is witnessing a gradual expansion, with a particularly notable increase in demand for intelligent IoT-based pet management products. In this context, consumer demands are shifting from mere interest to desires for experiences and emotional engagements. This study aims to address the prevalent issue in the current market where the majority of pet water dispensers focus solely on basic functionalities, neglecting deep user experience design. The research begins by constructing a user journey map to analyze the behavioral paths of users interacting with mobile and IoT water dispensers, thereby deriving user needs. Subsequently, a qualitative analysis based on the Kano model is conducted to determine the priorities of user satisfaction and requirements, and a Quality Function Deployment(QFD) chart is developed to analyze and quantify the importance of design requirements. The findings indicate that the importance weights of water intake statistics design requirements and water quality monitoring feedback design requirements are the highest, becoming key design considerations in the digital end-to-end system design process. Therefore, this study proposes a design direction for the IoT smart drinking system platform through the combined application of the Kano and QFD models, offering guidance on the remote user end system design for IoT pet water dispensers from a user needs perspective.

Implementasi Metode Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Untuk Merancang Peningkatan Kualitas Pelayanan Pendidikan di Politeknik ‘Aisyiyah Pontianak

In order to improve the quality of higher education services at Politeknik 'Aisyiyah Pontianak, an action plan was developed to close the quality gap between perceived expectations and expectations expected by students, as well as the characteristics of higher education service quality desired by students as service users. The Quality Function Deployment (QFD) model is the method used in this study to determine service attributes using the Servqual model. Three general information regarding students' desires, satisfaction, and expectations of service attributes were included in the distributed questionnaires. In conclusion, from the data processing of twenty educational service quality attributes, there are six attributes that have gaps in educational service quality. These gaps are fast online and offline academic services, easy access to information related to academics, fast and accurate acquisition of academic information, adequate library facilities (the number of collections in the library), adequate Internet facilities (ease of access, browsing speed), complete and adequate laboratory facilities. The action plan for quality improvement is (1) Improving the Academic Service System, (2) Providing a special portal for access to academic information, (3) Improving Academic Information System Services, (4) Improving Library Facilities by adding amount book collections, e-books, e-journals etc., (5) Improving Internet Facilities by adding Bandwitch, (6) Improving Laboratory Facilities.

Global semiconductor supply chain resilience challenges and mitigation strategies: A novel integrated decomposed fuzzy set Delphi, WINGS and QFD model

The recent COVID-19 pandemic, Ukrainian-Russian conflict, China-US trade war, and current environmental concerns regarding carbon emissions have all made the semiconductor supply chain (SCSC) more vulnerable. In addition, the uncertainty of global SCSC is increasingly obscured owing to several resilience challenges within the exiting supply chain network. Thus, supply chain resilience issues are becoming popular among researchers and policymakers. Unfortunately, there is a lack of systematic research on evaluation of resilience challenges and mitigation strategies for the global SCSC. Additionally, existing models are incompetent to capture the optimistic and pessimistic views of experts during interaction assessment and mitigation strategy evaluation in an uncertain environment. Hence, this research, for the first time, develops a novel integrated Decomposed Fuzzy Set (DFS)-based Delphi, Weighted Influence Non-linear Gauge System (WINGS), and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) model to identify and assess strength-interaction relationship between resilience challenges and mitigation strategies. The findings demonstrated that out of thirteen resilience challenges, seven were identified as causal group resilience challenges while the remaining six were classified as result group resilience challenges indicating that addressing the causal group resilience challenges may directly influence the mitigation of the result group resilience challenges. According to findings of DFS-WINGS analysis, the resilience challenges “Geopolitical tensions” and “Natural disasters” are the two most priority causal group resilience challenges that can significantly influence the result group system components. Furthermore, the DSF-QFD analysis confirmed that the mitigation strategies “Investing in semiconductor R&D and developing regional semiconductor manufacturing facilities” and “Diversification of key components suppliers and promoting domestic manufacturing” received the highest correlation among the mitigation strategies to address the current resilience issues faced by global SCSC. The study findings make a significant contribution to policymaking. The roles of resilience challenges and importance of mitigation strategies both can be used as benchmarks for the SCSC to make the global SCSC more resilient and sustainable.

A quality function deployment model by social network and group decision making: Application to product design of e-commerce platforms

Quality function deployment (QFD) is an effective method to convert customer requirements (CRs) into design requirements (DRs) by constructing house of quality (HOQ). With the rapid growth of the e-commerce market, it is a new challenge to utilize the available online reviews to facilitate the implementation of QFD. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel QFD model from the perspective of group decision making (GDM) and social network analysis (SNA), then applies the proposed model to product design under Chinese e-commerce scene. Firstly, this paper extracts CRs from online reviews on e-commerce platforms, and the initial HOQs can be constructed. Then a bilateral negotiation GDM method based on SNA is carried out to generate a consensus-based HOQ, and therefore the final priorities of DRs can be obtained. Finally, a case study is provided to illustrate the applicability, and some discussions and comparative analysis are also conducted. The result indicates that the proposed method can generate effective and stable results for QFD implementation in real-world e-commerce scenario.

An entropy - based fuzzy QFD model on used product remanufacturing design

Compared with new products, consumers put forward higher requirements on remanufactured products. Aimed at effectively transforming customer requirements (CRs) to technical characteristics (TCs) of remanufactured product design, an entropy-based fuzzy quality function deployment (QFD) model is proposed. In this model, triangular fuzzy numbers are suggested to express the vagueness information of CRs first, and then the importance of CRs is determined by an entropy-based algorithm, and the relationship between CRs and TCs is well explained by fuzzy QFD; finally, the importance of TCs is determined to clarify the designing emphasis. A remanufacturing engine is conducted to illuminate the practicability of this model. The results show that “Restorability” and “Reliability” will be treated as the key TCs to control, with the importance degree of 0.16 and 0.15. The entropy-based fuzzy QFD model can also be applied to similar product designs.

An integrated model for selecting bridge structural systems using quality function deployment and analytical hierarchy process

Selecting an efficient structural system during the conceptual design of bridge projects is an essential requirement for the project’s success and fulfilling stakeholders’ expectations. This process involves evaluating a broad range of objective and subjective requirements based on multiple technical criteria. Despite its importance, current literature lacks a structured methodology for assisting designers in the selection process of the bridge structural system. Therefore, this research aims to develop a selection model to facilitate the decision-making process, helping evaluate different bridge structural systems during the conceptual design phase. The primary goal is to choose the most optimal design that aligns with both the client’s needs and technical specifications. The proposed methodology begins by identifying client needs and finding their relative importance using an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) questionnaire, followed by determining the technical requirements in bridge conceptual design. A Quality Function Deployment (QFD) model is developed to evaluate bridge structural systems. The main advantage of integrating QFD and AHP is that it reduces the inconsistency and uncertainty in the QFD inputs. The methodology is implemented in a real case study of a bridge project in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), demonstrating improved results in structural system selection compared to traditional methods. While this research focused on the conceptual design phase of bridge projects, future work could extend to other phases of design.

An integrated decision framework for evaluating and recommending health care services

Quality management techniques such as the quality function deployment model can help hospitals assess and improve the quality of their services by integrating the voice of customers. The different quality parameters of this model are usually determined and assessed by experts; nonetheless, obtaining such experts is not always easy or inexpensive. Moreover, in this method, patient opinions are not usually considered directly, although they are the real users of the services and those who can best assess those services. Nevertheless, these opinions are easily accessible today, owing to the development of medical social networks where patients directly convey their opinions about the different services and features of a hospital. Therefore, it is feasible to replace expert knowledge with the information provided by these opinions. Based on this idea, this study proposes a novel fuzzy recommendation model based on the quality function deployment method to rank hospitals depending on patient opinions and preferences regarding hospital services. This model integrates a topic modeling strategy for determining hospital requirements, customer needs, and the relationship between them as well as a sentiment analysis algorithm for assessing customer satisfaction regarding hospital services. To demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method, several experiments were conducted using patient reviews from real hospitals, and the method was compared against other recommendation models. The results prove that this approach represents a step toward more personalized and effective health care system selection considering patient preferences and opinions.

A Big Data-Kano and SNA-CRP Based QFD Model: Application to Product Design Under Chinese New E-commerce Model

Chinese E-commerce market is increasingly saturated, fierce competition has spawned a new E-commerce model: more and more enterprises set up direct-sale stores on online shopping platforms to reduce costs by lessening intermediate links of sales and make products more competitive. However, new model also makes the enterprise face a series of customer needs from production to after-sales. Quality function deployment (QFD) has been proved be an effective method to integrate customer requirements (CRs) into the improvement of engineering characteristics (ECs) of products or services. To effectively identify CRs and determine the development direction of ECs, this article proposes a new QFD method based on the extended Kano model and social network analysis (SNA) method by considering the characteristics of online shopping reviews and the social relationship between the enterprise's departments. CRs are identified through crawler and word frequency analysis, while their Kano categories are generated by sentiment analysis and frequency-inverse document frequency algorithm. The objective weights of CRs are determined by word frequency and dynamically adjusted depending on enterprise's development stages. A SNA based consensus reaching process is devised to determine ECs’ priorities. The practicality of the proposed QFD model is verified by a case study of mobile phone design under the new E-commerce model. A comparative analysis shows the essential characteristics of the model, and the influence of calculation parameters is shown by the sensitivity analysis.

A Systematic Decision-Making Approach for Quality Function Deployment Based on Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic Term Sets

As a powerful tool for improving customer satisfaction, quality function deployment (QFD) can convert customer requirements (CRs) into engineering characteristics (ECs) during product development and design. Aiming to address the deficiencies of traditional QFD in expert evaluation, CRs’ weight determination and ECs’ importance ranking, this paper proposes an enhanced QFD model that integrates hesitant fuzzy binary semantic variables, the Best–Worst Method (BWM), and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The objective is to determine the prioritization of product engineering characteristics. Indeed, hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTS) have found extensive application in decision-making problems. Compared to other fuzzy language methods, HFLTS offers greater convenience and flexibility in addressing decision-makers’ hesitations and uncertainties. Initially, the combination of hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets with interval binary tuple language variables is employed to articulate the uncertainty in the assessment information provided by QFD team members. Subsequently, the improved BWM and TOPSIS methods based on HFLTS are used to improve the accuracy of the importance ranking of engineering characteristics by determining the weights of CRs and prioritizing ECs in two stages. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method are validated through an illustrative example.

Combining GRA with a Fuzzy QFD Model for the New Product Design and Development of Wickerwork Lamps

With the popularization of the concept of sustainability in traditional wickerwork, wickerwork lamps have become the most popular production. When customers purchase wickerwork lamp products, the Kansei consensus has become a key factor influencing the communication between manufacturers and customers. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the product design solutions for wickerwork lamps that meet the emotional satisfaction of users. Firstly, a three-level evaluation grid diagram driven by user attractiveness through Miryoku Engineering is established. Secondly, this paper uses grey relational analysis (GRA) to extract the priority order and its weight values in the perceptual vocabulary to identify the key user needs in product design. In order to effectively deal with the uncertain product evaluation information, the fuzzy quality function deployment (QFD) is used to construct the “emotional demand-design parameter” transformation model and derive the optimal design parameters in the mapping process, thus effectively reducing the ambiguity and uncertainty in the demand transformation process. Based on the experimental results, it is found that the best combination of Texture light transmittance, Simple wickerwork material, Wickerwork primary colours, Cascaded type and Pastoral style could be preferred by customers, thus this proposed method can effectively reduce the ambiguity and uncertainty in the design process. The results of study enable designers to accurately grasp customers’ perceptions of wickerwork lamp products and obtain the best design parameters for wickerwork lamp products.

Applying a Hybrid Kano/Quality Function Deployment Integration Approach to Wood Desk Designs for Open-Plan Offices

In order to better serve the users of wood desks in open-plan offices, the Kano model is used to analyze the problems encountered by users in the office. Combined with quality function deployment (QFD), this study conducted an analysis of the weighted average of users’ needs and the importance of engineering measures of product technical characteristics. The proposed system uses an integrated Kano–QFD model to identify users’ specific needs and scene experience with a more complete service system. Through the hybrid approach of the Kano model and QFD development and design technology, the wood desks in open-plan offices are optimized to improve the rationality and scientific nature of office furniture and enhance its market competitiveness.

Developing a quality function deployment model for the Ethiopian leather industry: Requirements and solutions under linguistic variables

ABSTRACT This study develops a quality function deployment model that integrates requirements and solutions through a qualitative information approach to break the current low-quality trap and ensure the improvement of the leather products manufacturing industry. This industry is a priority sector in Ethiopia’s industrial development strategy, but its performance is below par due to quality-related problems. Prior studies lack a model explaining the pathways to implement quality improvement interventions. The improvement of this industry requires qualitative assessment and is subject to uncertainty due to the linguistic preferences of decision makers. This study adopts the fuzzy Delphi method to arrive at a valid set of attributes and a fuzzy quality function deployment method to address their relationships. The findings demonstrate that 22 requirements and 16 solutions are valid measures. The top solutions include ensuring interdisciplinary design, employing process mapping, implementing quality-related standards and customer-centric operations, and establishing a quality-at-the-source attitude. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

A proposed multi-objective model for cellphone closed-loop supply chain optimization based on fuzzy QFD

A Closed-Loop Supply Chain Network (CLSCN) includes forward and reverse supply chains. In this research, a dynamic cellphone closed-loop supply chain is considered, which contains multiple plants, retailers, demand markets, and collection centers. The returned cellphones are significant parts of electronic waste, and there is an increasing demand for this product due to the technology advancement and population growth. In this investigation, a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model is proposed and solved with the GAMS software to configure a CLSCN in the Peel Region in Ontario, Canada. The results of the optimization model show which facilities should be open for minimization of the total cost of the network. Then, the model is extended to a multi-objective model by adding two objectives considering CO2 emissions and the quality aspects of the CLSCN. To handle the qualitative factors, a fuzzy Quality Function Deployment (QFD) model is discussed in this paper. Then, weighted-sums and ε-constraint methods are utilized to detect efficient solutions for the CLSCN. Finally, the results are discussed and the conclusions are provided. Based on the results, the weights of the objective functions have significant effects on both the selection of the facilities and the flows of the products between them.

Selection of electric vehicle using integrated Fuzzy-MCDM approach with analysis on challenges faced in hilly terrain

ABSTRACT Electric Vehicles (EVs) are still not a preferable choice among the consumers of vehicular world. It has now become necessary to showcase the merits of EVs to the consumers. If compared to the nonhilly areas, people in hills are still reluctant toward adoption of EVs due to various constraints as mentioned in this article. Several factors affect the desirability of EVs, including technical and customer-related factors. This work also proposes a model to help customers choose the most suitable EV by adjudging vehicles concerning multiple factors. During the judging process, extra care is taken to include factors defining the viewpoint of the general customer while purchasing the EV. Distinctly, two sets of criteria, one highlighting the technical specifications of the EV and the other exclusively defining the customer’s perspective of it, including features like cost, warranty, charging facility, etc., are taken up to rank the six most popular EV models in India using a Fuzzy-based Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) model. Here, the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) model is used to tackle the weightage of the criteria based on customer’s feedback. The outcome of this work and the evaluation process can act as a quick guideline for any arbitrary customer who plans to make a new purchase of an EV. Hyundai Kona electric scored 0.223 the highest, making it the most suitable choice, and Mahindra E20 plus scored 0.121, making it the least suitable choice among the list of EVs chosen in the study for the Indian market. An additional case study segment in this article focuses on the market penetration issues that the EVs may likely face on a hilly terrain in the perspective of energy consumption per trip and the customer woes that may arise due to terrain.

Halal Meat Exports Enhancement of Pakistan: An Intermediating Role of Global Technical Standards in Quality Function Deployment Model

A lean and sustainable food supply chain is one of the major strategies that businesses all around the world have been trying to adopt to provide the customers quality food and to remain competitive in the global market. Many industrialists, researchers, and economists have focused on food quality because of the high importance of this issue in the global meat markets context. This research was conducted to investigate the mediating role of Global Technical Standards (GTS) on Voice of Customers (VOC) and Exports Enhancement (EE). Halal meat industry and exports of Pakistan were the primary focus by using a mixed methodological approach. Initially, the quality function deployment (QFD) model was generated for the identification of exports requirements and competitive Novelty Analysis. Fourteen actors (experts) of Pakistan halal meat industry had participated in the identification of requirements and standards. Likewise, exporters from nine economies, including the United States of America, Brazil, Australia, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, India, Canada, and Pakistan, participated in Competitive Novelty Analysis. Secondly, 250 responses were generated from Pakistan’s halal meat industry on a five-point Likert scale. The findings of this study show a significant relationship between Voice of Customers (VOC) and Global Technical Standards (GTS). It was further highlighted that Global Technical Standards mediate the relationship between issues in exports and Exports Enhancement (EE) strategies.

An integrated quality-function-deployment and stochastic-dominance-based decision-making approach for prioritizing product concept alternatives

For continuous growth and sustaining the competitiveness of a company, product developers spend most of their time making crucial decisions to address a great variety of unpredictable and uncontrollable information. Several mathematical approaches have already been adopted to aid the developers in selecting the best product concept for meeting customers’ requirements and exceeding their expectations. However, those methods do not cope with fully revealed developers’ preferences and do not take into account the random distribution of the target values of engineering characteristics (ECs). In this paper, the application of a quality function deployment (QFD)-based model and a stochastic dominance-based method is presented for product concept development. The first phase in the approach is to construct a product planning house of quality (PPHoQ), which is the core and the engine of the entire QFD model. This model depicts the relationship between the customers’ requirements (CRs) and the ECs for a product. The proposed approach addresses both the relationships between CRs and ECs, in addition to the correlations among the ECs. In this study, developers are invited to express their preferences using different types of linguistic terms dependent on their diverse backgrounds and understanding levels of the product. Based on the outcomes of the PPHoQ process, a variety of alternative concepts can be created. The alternatives are then prioritized and ranked in the second phase. The proposed approach facilitates the random distribution with stochastic variables rather than fuzzy methods to obtain more realistic product concept alternatives. Several examples and comparative results further illustrate that unbalanced linguistic terms and stochastic dominance efficiently endow the product concept selection model with uncertain information and the random distribution in a realistic style.

Developing an ANP-QFD Approach for Balers’ Appearance Design: A Case Study

The appearance of products plays a crucial role in determining consumers’ preferences and purchase intentions. However, there is sparse literature focusing on the modelling design or related approaches for agriculture machines. To address the issue, this article proposed an innovative design model integrating the Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to improve the appearance of a baler, coordinating customer requirements and engineering technical requirements in the design process. First, three customer requirements (CRs) and eight design requirements (DRs) were identified via several qualitative research methods, including literature review, market research and user interviews. Second, the integrated ANP-QFD model was employed to obtain the weights of DRs considering the inner relationship among them and was then compared with the results derived from a single QFD model. Finally, the theoretical findings in the present study were applied to the appearance design of a baler. The researcher then conducted a specific analysis on the aspects of shape, colour, material, and surface decoration. It can be derived that an integrated ANP-QFD model can overcome the shortcomings of the single QFD method and clarify the weight of demand indicators, providing valuable insights for different stakeholders with regard to balers’ appearance design.

품질기능전개(Quality Function Deployment)를 이용한 국내산 식재료 사용 가정간편식의 제품 설계요소 연구

The purpose of this study was to develop a concept for HMR (home meal replacement) using local foods by QFD (quality function deployment) model considering the consumer needs and the opinions of experts. A consumer survey and expert opinion survey were conducted from November to December, 2020. A total of 26 for experts and 474 for consumers were selected and used for the final analysis. As a result, the customer requirements for HMR using local foods were in the order of ‘use of wrapping paper that save the environment’, ‘nutritional balance’, and ‘hygienic cooking and production’. The results from the calculation of relative importance of technical characteristics were ‘good quality versus price’, ‘good portion size versus price’, and ‘rationality of the price compared to cooking from raw materials’ for HMR using local foods. Regarding the priority of technical characteristics for experts and needs for consumers, the QFD model identified that ‘Price’ and ‘Quality’ were the highest for HMR using local foods.