Decision-making in process design based on failure knowledge

Decision-making in process design is an indispensable stage in product development. A novel decision-making method is presented that draws upon the failure knowledge of scenarios. An ontological expression of failure scenarios is presented together with a framework of failure knowledge network (FKN). According to the roles of Quality characteristics (QCs) in failure processing, QCs are set into three categories, which present the monitor targets, control targets and improvement targets respectively for quality management. A mathematical model and algorithms based on the Analytic Network Process (ANP) is introduced for calculating the priority of QCs with respect to different development scenarios. A case study on propeller improvement is provided according to the proposed decision-making procedure based on FKN. This methodology is applied in the propeller design process to solve the problem of prioritizing QCs. This paper provides a practical approach for decision-making in product quality.