Engineering Characteristics Prioritization in Quality Function Deployment Using an Improved ORESTE Method with Double Hierarchy Hesitant Linguistic Information

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a customer-driven product development technique widely utilized to translating customer requirements into engineering characteristics for maximum customer satisfaction. Nonetheless, when used in real situations, the traditional QFD method has been criticized to have many deficiencies, e.g., in expressing experts' uncertain assessments and prioritizing engineering characteristics. In this study, we propose a new engineering characteristics prioritization approach based on double hierarchy hesitant linguistic term sets (DHHLTSs) and the ORESTE (organisation, rangement et Synthese de donnees relarionnelles, in French) method to overcome the shortcomings of the traditional QFD. Specifically, the main contributions of this study to the literature are that the DHHLTSs are utilized to describe the hesitant relationship assessments between customer requirements and engineering characteristics provided by experts, and the ORESTE method is modified and used to determine the importance ranking orders of engineering characteristics. Finally, a case study and a comparison analysis are presented to illustrate the feasibility and practicability of the proposed QFD approach. The advantages of the new approach being proposed are higher flexibility in handling experts' intricate and hesitant relationship evaluation information and effective in providing a reasonable prioritization of engineering characteristics in the practical QFD analysis.