AN INTELLIGENT HYBRID SYSTEM FOR CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS AND PRODUCT ATTRIBUTE TARGETS DETERMINATION

Aligning its quality initiatives in synchronization with the customer' s perception of values is one of the key management strategies for imp roving the competitive edge of an organization. Therefore, it will be a distinct advantage if one can succeed in effectively capturing the g enuine and major customer attributes (requirements), systematically an alysing and duly transforming them into the appropriate product attrib utes (features). This paper puts forward a novel approach for analysin g customer attributes and projecting them into the relevant design, en gineering and product attributes in order to facilitate decision-makin g and to guide downstream manufacturing planning and control activitie s. The proposed hybrid system incorporates the principles of quality f unction deployment, analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy set theory to tackle the complex and often imprecise problem domain encountered in customer requirement management. It offers an analytical and intellige nt tool for decoding, prioritizing and inferring the qualitative, some times vague and imprecise Voice of Customer. As a result, the appropri ate product attributes can be mapped out and their relevant design tar gets can be determined quantitatively and consistently. The software s upporting the hybrid system is constructed within a generic framework which can be easily customized and configured into specific enterprise models capable of offering more timely responses to the dynamic marke t demand.