Fuzzy quality function deployment (FQFD) to assess student requirement in engineering institutions: An Indian prospective

Quality is a complex and multifaceted concept. It is being increasingly recognized that high quality of products and services and their associated customer satisfaction are the key elements for survival of any organization. It is the basis that differentiates between a mediocre and an excellent organization. This concept is equally important for an engineering education system. The present paper hybridizes QFD with fuzzy dominance order to assess the student requirements in engineering education system. It uses content analysis and nominal group technique (NGT) to identify requirements. Fuzzy dominance order has been used to establish democratic wisdom to identify customer requirements. Relation matrix used in traditional QFD has been replaced with aggregated fuzzy relation matrix to justify subjective responses. The results obtained by this approach and traditional QFD approach are compared using Interpretive Structural Model (ISM) for deployable elements of technical requirements as yardstick.