Integration of ECQFD, TRIZ, and AHP for innovative and sustainable product development

Automotive organizations need to adopt sustainability principles to survive in a competitive environment. The rapidly changing marketplace also means that organizations need to include innovation in product development. We propose a model that integrates environmentally conscious quality function deployment (ECQFD), the theory of inventive problem-solving (TRIZ), and an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) for innovative and sustainable product development of automotive components. The voice of the customer (VOC) was captured and translated to engineering characteristics using ECQFD. Design options were identified using ECQFD and correlated with TRIZ to identify innovative design alternatives. Selection of the best design alternatives under many criteria is a typical multicriteria decision-making problem. We used AHP to identify the best design in terms of innovation and sustainability. These design changes were then incorporated in the component. A case study involving design of an automotive component demonstrates the applicability of our approach.