A fuzzy evaluation of design alternatives in modular product development

Businesses are undergoing a major paradigm shift into an era of agility. An agile corporation should be able to rapidly respond to market changes. For this reason, corporations have been seeking to develop numerous information technology systems to assist with the management of their business processes, e.g., the process of product development. This paper presents a fuzzy approach to evaluate design alternatives in modular product development and aims to address the research issue: "How can modular design be carried out to meet a customer's fuzzy requirements using modules that come from suppliers that are geographically separated and operate on differing computer platforms?" The proposed methodology is applied to a real-world case that involves personal computer synthesis at one of largest distribution centers in the world. The main contribution of this paper is to present a fuzzy approach to model imprecision information and requirements of customers in modular product development; and to evaluate the design alternatives for designers.