Integrated approach for sustainable product development using QFD and ANP

The success of the company lies in understanding the customer preferences, tastes and anticipating the changes required in existing or new products being offered. The proposed methodology promotes the product development process using a decision perspective, considering it as a deliberate business processes with scores of generic decisions. The objective of this work is to enable a new and deeper understanding of how firms can structure and manage iterative and integrative approaches to product development in rapidly changing markets. This study uses a heuristic approach to formulate the problem of product development using an integrated approach of analytical network process (ANP) with quality function deployment (QFD) to evaluate the most satisfying design for customer. Identification of customer attributes and preferences is followed by structuring of the decision problem. The general feedback network is used to accommodate variety of interactions, dependencies and feedback between various elements. Model enables assessment of strategies to synthesise qualitative and quantitative factors in decision making keeping checks on consistency. Evaluation of the impact of the engineering characteristics weights is done for matching it with stated objectives. A case study for development of a hypothetical writing instrument for has been presented here for the proposed approach. © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.