This thesis reviews Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and its relation with the Total Quality Management philosophy. In particular the thesis focuses on the inherent drawbacks of QFD and it investigates potential techniques and methods that could be integrated with QFD to overcome some of its problems. Fuzzy Logic/Fuzzy Sets and the Taguchi Method are identified as techniques and methods to be incorporated within the QFD process to provide a more consistent, quantitative and rigorous method to analyse subjective data in the QFD charts. Two approaches are developed that integrate Fuzzy Logic and Fuzzy Set theory with QFD to identify and rectify inconsistencies in the input data in the QFD charts. Another approach that integrates the Taguchi Method and QFD is further developed to set more precise technical target values in the QFD chart. Case studies are used to illustrate the results of the developed Fuzzy-QFD and the QFD-Taguchi approaches. The synergistic approaches take into account nteractions between requirements, which are not utilised in the traditional QFD charts. In addition, it was found that the resulting data in the QFD charts are sensitive to the interaction in the correlation matrices, therefore another method is also proposed to detect inconsistencies in the correlation matrices by utilising an inference mechanism and multi-valued logic theory. An integrated systems approach to QFD is eventually developed that forms a synergy between QFD, Fuzzy Logic/Fuzzy sets and the Taguchi Method. This results in a superior approach that combines the inherent benefits of each of the individual approaches. The integrated systems approach to QFD is a generic approach that can be used for other case studies provided that in addition to the relationship matrix and customer importance ratings, the correlation matrices and benchmarking data are readily available. As a result of this research, the subjectivity and ill-defined data in the QFD process have been partially resolved by the application of Fuzzy Logic/Fuzzy sets. The QFD analysis has been made more rigorous by integrating it to more quantitative techniques (Fuzzy Logic/Fuzzy sets) and method (Taguchi Method). It has been identified that demands are dependent on each other in the QFD charts and how including these dependencies in the problem can change the results. This problem has been addressed by considering interactions between the demands in the Fuzzy-QFD and QFD-Taguchi approaches developed. These interactions between demands have been identified and dealt with in the developed approaches, such that they no longer provide sub-optimal solutions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:749634 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Bouchereau, Vivianne |
| Contributors | Rowlands, Hefin |
| Publisher | University of South Wales |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://pure.southwales.ac.uk/en/studentthesis/an-integrated-systems-approach-to-qfd(3699183a-e87f-4c11-9c04-65e0a1da7aae).html |
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