Quality function deployment (QFD) is becoming a widely used customer-driven approach and tool in product design. The inherent fuzziness in QFD modelling makes fuzzy regression more appealing than classical statistical tools. A new fuzzy regression-based mathematical programming approach for QFD product planning is presented. First, fuzzy regression theories with symmetric and nonsymmetric triangular fuzzy coefficients are discussed to identify the relational functions between engineering characteristics and customer requirements and among engineering characteristics. By embedding the relational functions obtained by fuzzy regression, a mathematical programming model is developed to determine targets of engineering characteristics, taking into consideration the fuzziness, financial factors and customer expectations among the competitors in product development process. The proposed modelling approach can help design team assess relational functions in QFD effectively and reconcile tradeoffs among the various degree of customer satisfaction and determine a set of the level of attainment of engineering characteristics for the new/improved product towards a higher customer expectation within design budget. The comparison results under symmetric and non-symmetric cases and the simulation analysis are made when the approach is applied to a quality improvement problem for an emulsification dynamite packing machine.

The current models and methods for PLP are usually restricted on some special types and usually the same type of possibilistic distribution. This paper focuses on linear programming problems with general possibilistic resources (GRPLP) and linear programming problems with general possibilistic objective coe cients (GOPLP). By introducing some new concepts of the largest most possible point, the smallest most possible point, the most optimistic point and the most possible decision, a new approach for formulating possibilistic constraints through general possibilistic resources and a satisfactory solution method will be discussed in this paper. A most possible decision method for GRPLP and a dual approach for GOPLP will be proposed for solving complex industrial decision problems.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is becoming a widely used customer-oriented approach and tool in product design. Taking into account the "nancial factors and uncertainties in the product design process, this paper deals with a fuzzy formulation combined with a genetic-based interactive approach to QFD planning. By introducing new concepts of planned degree, actual achieved degree, actual primary costs required and actual planned costs, two types of fuzzy optimisation models are discussed in this paper. These models consider not only the overall customer satisfaction, but also the enterprise satisfaction with the costs committed to the product. With the interactive approach, the best balance between enterprise satisfaction and overall customer satisfaction can be obtained, and the preferred solutions under di!erent business criteria can be achieved through human}computer nteraction.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a wellknown customer-oriented methodology, which is widely used to assist decision making in product design and development in various types of production. etermining how and to what extent certain characteristics or technical attributes (TAs) of products are to be met, with a view to gaining a higher level of overall customer satisfaction, is a key success factor in product design and development. An operational QFD planning problem with resource allocation is considered in this paper. The aim is to plan the attainment of TAs by allocating resources among the TAs with a view to achieving maximized overall customer satisfaction. Taking into account the technical and resource constraints, and the impact of the correlation among TAs, the operational QFD planning with resource allocation is formulated as a linear program and solved by a heuristics-combined Simplex Method. An overall procedure is presented to help a design team to implement this QFD design planning with resource allocation in practice. This model can bridge the gap and conflicts

In the global manufacturing environment, decisions involving production activities and distribution should be made in an integrative manner for substantial savings in the logistics costs. An integrated decision on production assignment, lot sizing, transportation, and order quantity for a multiple-suppliers/multiple-destinations logistics network in a global manufacturing system is discussed in this paper. The integrated decision process can be viewed as a two-layer decision. The first layer is the combined decisions of production assignment and lot sizing (APLS-M), while the second layer is the combined decisions of transportation and order quantity determination (TOQ-M). A two-layer decomposition method combining two heuristics is hence developed to solve the integrated decision model (IDM-M). An assignment heuristic and a transportation heuristic are designed to solve the decision layers APLS-M and TOQ-M, respectively. Simulations were conducted on a practical example in an electronics manufacturing enterprise together with different sizes of problems. The results indicate that the two-layer decomposition method with heuristics is effective and provides a practical way to solve medium and large-scale integrated decision problems.