An Integrated Approach of House of Quality and MultiCriteria Evaluation in the Design of an Electric Formula Student Car

Henrique Stefano Skorupa Bubicz Correa Motta

Key information

Authors:

Henrique Stefano Skorupa Bubicz Correa Motta (Henrique Stefano Skorupa Bubicz Correa Motta)

Supervisors:

Isabel Maria da Silva João; João Carlos Da Cruz Lourenço (João Carlos Da Cruz Lourenço)

Published in

01/25/2021

Abstract

The House of Quality (HOQ) has been used in different industries as a tool to capture the voice of the customer and guide decision-makers and engineering teams in the development and improvement of products. Some problems with the traditional application of the HOQ are well known in the literature and are mostly related to measurement scales. They are the assigning of weights as direct indicators of importance to Customer Attributes (CA) and their relationship to Engineering Characteristics (EC) using ordinal scales as if they were cardinal. In recent years, the HOQ was improved with the use of quantitative methods, especially from multiple criteria decision analysis, in an attempt to solve such issues. However, the approaches used did not solve them. This thesis applies the HOQ in the design process of a Formula Student electric vehicle integrated with the multiple criteria decision analysis tool MACBETH to overcome the drawbacks of the techniques formerly applied in the HOQ. Additionally, besides proposing a methodology that can address the most critical shortcomings of the HOQ, the resource allocation software tool PROBE is applied to identify efficient portfolios of scenarios of performance for the ECs. The roof of the HOQ is also integrated in the quantitative analysis with the definition of EC synergies in the portfolio tool. The results are a HOQ that represents both the value perceptions of the customers and of the engineering team, and a proposed efficient portfolio of ECs specifications for implementation in the new Formula Student electric vehicle.