Value measurement in the voice of the customer

Understanding and modeling customer needs in terms of value contribute to value-driven engineering design. In this paper, an analytical approach is introduced to quantitatively measure value in the voice of the customer (VOC) in QFD. Attributes are added to measure the achievement of customer needs, which are always missing in traditional VOC. The underlying foundation to composite incommensurable attributes is multi-attribute utility theory, which provides rigorous basis to model individual and group preferences. It is shown that some methodological problems are resolved, such as weighting problem of customer needs and selection of function form. Derivation relationships are also established between different kinds of function forms that are utilized for calculating customer satisfaction. Thus it helps make rational and value-informed design decisions.