An integrated fuzzy logic approach to customer-oriented product design

Today's competitive market forces product designers to take more specific requests of the customer into consideration. In facilitating mass customisation (MC), a good interaction should be established between customers and designers. The aim of this article is to present a methodology with an integrated tool environment that helps designer to build effective customer-oriented products by means of a fuzzy logic approach in conjunction with a CAD tool. The ability to handle customer's linguistic or imprecise demands, which are generally in an intangible format, makes fuzzy logic approach an effective choice for the study. The proposed methodology is demonstrated in a case example. The methodology provides an effective mechanism to handle customer's multiple qualitative demands in order to figure out the best-fitting configuration of the product. It can be employed within manufacturer's product development services and also for Internet-based collaborative product design for realising MC.