For achieving the improvement goals of performances of engineering characteristics(ECs) in an economic and effective way, an integrated methodology for determining the final importance ratings of ECs was proposed.According to the competitive evaluations of performances of ECs and value evaluations of the products of a company and its competitors, a model for determining the competitive importance ratings of ECs corresponding to every member of quality function deployment team was built by using
multiple attribute decision making method,and this model was solved by using Lagrange function, and then the competitive importance ratings of ECs in HOQ were determined by analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Secondly,based on the integration of scale method and AHP, the importance rating of achieving the improvement target of performances(ITOP) of every EC was determined.Lastly, based on the combination of the customer-satisfaction-based importance rating, the competitive importance rating,and the importance rating of achieving the ITOP of every EC,the final importance ratings of ECs were determined. A case study of product development of a fully automatic washing machine in a corporation was provided to illustrate the application of the proposed method.
