A new incomplete preference relations based approach to quality function deployment

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a widely-used methodology for developing a design quality aimed at satisfying the customer and translating the customer's demand into design targets. As QFD methodology is based on the voices of customers, it requires a group of individuals, or decision makers (DMs), to express their preferences. However, there can be a bottleneck since DMs may not have a perfect knowledge of the problem to be solved. Thereby, the aim of this study is to improve the effectiveness of the evaluation process in QFD. The QFD methodology is extended by introducing a new group decision making (GDM) approach that takes into account incomplete information of DMs by means of the fuzzy set theory. The proposed approach is applied to a collaborative software development process to demonstrate its potential. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.