Ryk. Fung et al., AN INTELLIGENT HYBRID SYSTEM FOR CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS AND PRODUCT ATTRIBUTE TARGETS DETERMINATION, International Journal of Production Research, 36(1), 1998, pp. 13-34
Citations number
21
Categorie Soggetti
Engineering,"Operatione Research & Management Science
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.