Fuzzy PROMETHEE GDSS for technical requirements ranking in HOQ

This paper provides a fuzzy Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) in a Group Decision Support System (GDSS) approach to ranking the technical requirements for the house of quality (HOQ) process in multi-criteria product design. The problem under study involves incorporating the design alternatives of a group of designers located in different geographies who often provide vague and imprecise linguistic design information to the HOQ process. As such, the proposed fuzzy PROMETHEE GDSS allows the quality function deployment (QFD) team of designers to minimize any deviation arising from the individual designer preferences and to capture the ambiguity of the imprecise design information when expressing the importance of customer needs and to delineate the linkage between customer needs and the technical requirements. The approach advances the HOQ group decision-making context in two important aspects. First, it treats each criterion and decision maker (DM) as unique in terms of the preference function and threshold levels. Second, it facilitates a rapid communication among DMs for the HOQ process. A case of a design team for an ergonomic chair manufacturer serves to validate this approach.