Quality Function Deployment Using Improved Interpretive Structural Modeling

Due to the product diversification and complication, sharing the product information between the product development members has been important in the product development process. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is one of the effective methods to share the information of the product using the quality matrices that describes the relationship between design elements needed to be considered. This paper improves QFD by applying the Interpretive structural modeling (ISM). The ISM visually expresses the complex relationship between design elements by using matrix operation. This paper also improves the ISM in order to evaluate not only the relationships between the same type of design elements but also that between in different type. The proposed QFD is applied to a disc brake design problem, and their applicability is confirmed.