Multi-issue negotiation in quality function deployment: Modified Even-Swaps in new product development

WOS: 000368953700003
Quality function deployment (QFD) is one of the most powerful methodologies in new product development (NPD) because of its systematic support of knowledge creation and sharing. However, greater product complexity, increasing dynamic customer requirements and further decentralization of innovation teams undermine applicability of QFD in modern NPD. Modifying QFD methodology with a multi-issue negotiation mechanism promises to overcome these obstacles because this negotiation-based structure (i) enables QFD to define a large number of interdependent decision parameters while handling complicated design trade-offs, (ii) includes changing customer requirements in real-time rather than a cycle time determined by length of the product development process, (iii) allows decentralized NPD teams to negotiate with each other and customers concurrently. This study presents a multi-issue negotiation based QFD methodology by using a recently developed mechanism for multi-issue negotiation (namely, Modified Even-Swaps) and illustrates strengths and weaknesses along with practical insights with a case study of the development of a washing machine. The QFD methodology proposed in this study provides new options to assess new product alternatives by allowing customer co-creation which is essential in complex and often tacit-knowledge dependent comparisons and also intrinsically helpful for fine-tuning dynamically evolving customer requirements. Moreover, it supports competition-based interactions of decentralized NPD teams. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) [BIDEB 2214/A]; Scientific Research Projects Governing Unit (BAPYB) of Gaziantep University
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, suggestions and corrections, which greatly improved the quality of the paper. The author from TU Bursa would like to acknowledge the international research fellowship provided by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK: BIDEB 2214/A). The author from Gaziantep University would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by Scientific Research Projects Governing Unit (BAPYB) of Gaziantep University.