A Genetic Algorithm for Solving a QFD(Quality Function Deployment) Optimization Problem

Abstract

Determining the optimal levels of the technical attributes (TAs) of a product to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction is the main activity in the planning process for quality function deployment (QFD). In real applications, the number of customer requirements for developing a single product is quite large, and the number of converted TAs is also high so the size of the house of quality (HoQ) becomes huge. Furthermore, the TA levels are often discrete instead of continuous and the product market can be divided into several market segments corresponding to the number of HoQ, which also unacceptably increases the size of the QFD optimization problem and the time spent on making decisions. This paper proposed a genetic algorithm (GA) solution approach to finding the optimum set of TAs in QFD in the above situation. A numerical example is provided for illustrating the proposed approach. To assess the computational performance of the GA, tests were performed on problems of various sizes using a fractional factorial design.