Customer-driven product planning using conjoint analysis and QFD–ANP methodology

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a customer-driven strategic product-planning tool which translates the customer needs (CNs) into design requirements (DRs). During the implementation of QFD approach, certain shortcomings are encountered. One of the major difficulties in using QFD is the complexity in the construction of house of quality (HOQ) when the customer needs portion is of unreasonable size. Factor analysis is used in the proposed methodology to resolve this problem. Another drawback is the scope for existence of conceptual gap between CNs and DRs, as the priority structure of CNs is developed through assigning different importance weights for CNs based on QFD team members' direct experience with the customers. In this paper, conjoint analysis is adopted to bridge the gap. Sometimes the CNs and DRs are not independent and linear. To address interdependencies between CNs and DRs as well as the intra-dependence among them, the methodology of analytic network process is employed in the present work to build HOQ for product planning. A case study on domestic refrigerator is presented to illustrate the proposed methodology.