On How to Prioritize Design Requirements During the QFD Planning Process

A decision model for the prioritization of design requirements during the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) planning process is introduced. The concept of deployment normalization as advocated by Lyman [8] is extended to properly account for dependencies which may exist between design requirements. A mathematical justification for prioritizing design resources by ranking the index of technical importance to cost, as first proposed by Hales et al. [5], is provided.