Listening to the future voice of the customer using fuzzy trend analysis in QFD

Abstract

Meeting customers' needs and requirements is of ultimate importance in quality management. The quality function deployment technique is widely used to translate customers' voices into design requirements. To retain competitive advantage, companies should also adopt a more proactive approach by listening to the voice of the customer in the future. It is not easy, however, to interpret future customer voices, as they may be ambiguous and changing. Fuzzy theory can be used to quantify the vague linguistic data gathered from preliminary surveys or discussions with customers. This article proposes an approach that listens to future customer voices through the use of fuzzy theory and fuzzy trend analysis. Fuzzy theory quantifies the vague linguistic data gathered. Through the use of fuzzy trend analysis, the transformed data can be incorporated into the calculation of the final importance values. An example is presented to illustrate the proposed approach.