TRANSFORMING THE HOUSE OF QUALITY TO A MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION FORMULATION

There is a tremendous gap between the sophisticated optimization metho ds employed by engineers and the ad hoc decision-making methods employ ed by engineering managers. The goal of this paper is to bridge that g ap by presenting a method for transforming qualitative information obt ained using the ''House of Quality'' (a popular engineering management tool) into a constrained multiobjective optimization problem. Subject ive multiattribute utility optimization is employed to combine this qu alitative design information with quantitative constraints used in typ ical design problems. A structural dynamics example with conflicting o bjectives of structural cost, maintenance cost, service life, construc tion duration and occupant discomfort resulting from vibration illustr ates the approach.