Quality Function Deployment (QFD) adopts a customer-driven approach and pro
vides a structural way to ensure that the final product or service meets cu
stomer requirements. As the central part of the-house of quality (HOQ), the
relationship matrix links customer attributes and technical responses thro
ugh a two-dimensional diagram. As the weightage used is discrete in nature,
the ranking of technical responses is sensitive to the scoring system. The
technical priority guides QFD practitioners in making trade-offs for resou
rce allocation and directs the downstream QFD activities. The stability of
the technical priority values is, hence, important and desirable. To minimi
ze the variability of technical priority, an optimization model is develope
d and its optimal solution is employed as the scoring system in the calcula
tion of the final technical importance, Two examples are presented to illus
trate the use of the model. Some implementation issues relating to the prop
osed approach are also discussed.