Title: Customer requirements mapping method based on association rules mining for mass customisation

Authors: Shi-Sheng Xia, Li-Ya Wang

Addresses: Department of Industry Engineering and Logistic Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. ' Department of Industry Engineering and Logistic Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

Abstract: Customer requirements analysis is the key step for product variety design of mass customisation. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a widely used management technique for comprehending the |Voice of the Customer| (VOC), however, QFD in excess depends on human subjective judgement during extracting customer requirements and determination of the importance weights of customer requirements. And also, QFD process and related problems are complicated. In this paper, based on generic data structure of product family (GBOM), association rules analysis is introduced to construct the classification mechanism between customer requirements and product architecture. The new method can map customer requirements to the items of product family architecture respectively, accomplish the mapping process from customer domain to physical domain directly, decrease mutual process between customer and designer, improve the product design quality, and thus furthest satisfy customer needs. Finally, an example of customer requirements mapping of the elevator cabin is used to illustrate the proposed method.

Keywords: association rules mining; requirements mapping; classification mechanisms; generic data structure of product family; GBOM; mass customisation; customer requirements; product architecture; product design; elevator cabin design; lift cabin design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2010.031935

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2010 Vol.37 No.3/4, pp.198 - 203

Published online: 03 Mar 2010 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article