Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 96339647

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Expert Systems with Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

Selection effective management tools on setting European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model by a quality function deployment (QFD) approach
Same Yousee a,, Mahmood Mohammadi b, Jalal Haghighat Monfared b
a b

Islamic Azad University, Central Branch of Tehran, Faculty of Management, Tehran, Iran Islamic Azad University, Central Branch of Tehran, Department of Industrial Management, Tehran, Iran

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
EFQM Excellence model literature indicates that using the management tools that are relevant to the organizations needs has become a strategic issue for companies in todays competitive environment. By choosing and applying the best management tools among too many management tools, companies can improve their performances and then increase customer satisfaction and gain market shares. The aim of this research is to propose an original approach for the management tools selection based on the quality function deployment (QFD) approach, a methodology which has been successfully adopted in new products development. Specically, the research addresses the issue of how to deploy the house of quality (HOQ) to effectively and efciently improve management tools selection processes and thus company satisfaction about its excellence achievement. Fuzzy logic is also adopted to deal with the vagueness nature of the qualitative linguistic judgments required in the proposed HOQ. The model of this research has been tested by means of a real case application, which refers to an Iranian company operating in the automotive industry in this case the mixture of 15 categories of management tools with ve EFQM enabler criteria has been characterized by using of the research model. And also the test of the hypothesis of this research has been done by using spearman correlation coefcient. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Management tools European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Quality function deployment (QFD) Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) Entropy method Symmetrical triangular fuzzy numbers (STFN)

1. Introduction Since its creation in 1991, the main purpose of the European Quality Award (EQA) has been to recognize the organizational excellence in European companies. The EFQM excellence model is the framework behind this award and it has clearly become the most commonly applied model in Europe for total quality management (TQM) (Westlund, 2001). Although in organizational practice the use of the EFQM excellence model is practically unquestioned, some uncertainties still remain at the academic level, mainly related to its implementation and assessment of accomplishing of its criteria in the organizations. The EFQM model constitutes a non-prescriptive framework that assumes there are different approaches to achieving sustainable excellence (Ghobadian & Woo, 1996) that derives in the existence of multiple interpretations around its implementation. However, it is made up of certain notions and ideas about the general relationships between its elements that have still not been demonstrated empirically (Bou-Llusar et al., 2005). In this

Corresponding author. Address: P.O. Box: 14515/775, Eskandari St., Tehran, Iran. Tel.: +98 9122490306. E-mail addresses: s.yousee@iauctb.ac.ir, sam.yousee@gmail.com (S. Yousee).
0957-4174/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2011.01.166

sense, the logic behind the model is that by improving how the organization operates the management tools there will be an inevitable improvement in the results. It means that management tools are the main part of EFQM excellence model and the fact is, achieving excellence is depend on using the best management tools that are adopt with the organizations needs for excellence and have a high level of performance in using of those management tools. Previous studies have also emphasized the need to using management tools in developing the excellence in organization (Leonard & Aadam, 2002). As shown in Fig. 1, Assume EFQM model as a pyramid that the fundamental concept and the criteria of EFQM model are in the rst and the second level of this pyramid, and also management tools as the third level of this pyramid (European Foundation for Quality Management, 1999). So, identifying and using best management tools according to organizations needs in setting EFQM model and achieving results in organizations are so important. The purpose of the current research is to represent a quality function deployment (QFD) model with both crisp and fuzzy approaches for the linkages between the EFQM criteria and management tools, and use of this model for identifying and prioritizing management tools that are so effective and match with organizational needs for excellence. This aim can be expressed through the following question.

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3. Research methodology
Fundamental concept Criteria Management tools
Fig. 1. Three level of EFQM model.

3.1. Conceptual model of the research The conceptual model of this research is an extension of a quality function deployment (QFD) model in EFQM excellence model and management tools selection domain. The model of this research can considered as Fig. 2. It should notice that, it is a rst time that a QFD model has been used in EFQM excellence model and management tools selection led. As shown in Fig. 2, it can consider that organization is as a customer. But in this model a customer looking for the excellence, and the needs or criteria of this customer are EFQM enabler criteria. On the other hand, the technical attributes for satisfying this customer is the effective management tools on setting EFQM model. So, to achieving excellence, organization has some needs or organizational needs for excellence (ONE) and for satisfying these criteria, organization determine some technical attributes for excellence (TAE). The voices of organization (VOO) about the excellence should be hear and answered. So now these criteria and technical attributes should be prioritizing according to the relationship between themselves. Finally, by use of these prioritized excellence criteria and technical attributes for excellence, the organization can more concentrate on its core competences and has a basis for its excellence programming. The QFD model of this research has named house of excellence (HOE), because this model basically looking for the excellence improvement in organization by prioritizes the effective management tools on setting EFQM excellence model in organization. As it is known, the house of quality (HOQ) in standard QFD model is for improving the quality of the products according to the customers criteria about the products, but here, organization is as a customer that has some needs for excellence and these needs should be satised by technical attributes for excellence (TAE). 3.2. Descriptions of the HOE model According to the above preparations, our proposed HOE model (Fig. 3) can be described as follows 9-step procedure. These descriptions, both qualitative and quantitative, are based on the ideas from Chan and Wu (2005). Step 1. Identify organization needs for excellence (WHATs): The producing company should know what organization need for excellence is important for the company; otherwise you cannot

How organizations can identify, prioritize and select management tools that are effective on setting EFQM model in organizations? The answers to this question would facilitate the understanding of what are the most important management tools for an organization that could the improve results, and thus would give some ideas about the areas where the organizations should concentrate their efforts in the management systems, thus allowing a better implementation of the EFQM model. 2. Research questions and hypothesizes The preceding section highlights how the EFQM excellence model is based on the assumption that management tools drive the results and how both enabler criteria and management tools are themselves interrelated. Nevertheless, the EFQM excellence model is a non-prescriptive framework that allows organizations that adopt different approaches to achieve excellence in results. However, the full benet of the model is obtained when organizations develop and use best management tools that they are match to their needs and have effect on enablers in a way that allows them to obtain optimal results. This premise leads to our main research question, aimed at propose a QFD method for identifying, prioritizing and selection of effective management tools on setting EFQM model in organization, and making comparison between both crisp and fuzzy approaches in using QFD method. This research question is aimed at nding out how enablers should be ranked to maximize their inuence over ranking the using of management tools. In other words, we attempt to analyze what is the appropriate method or model within the management tools domain that leads to a maximum improvement in a given excellence prole. This main question can be breakdown in to the four questions and tow hypothesizes consist of following items. Questions: 1. What are the effective criteria on setting EFQM excellence model in an organization? 2. What are the ranking of effective criteria on setting EFQM excellence model in an organization (the research case)? 3. What are the effective management tools on setting EFQM excellence model in an organization? 4. What are the ranking of effective management tools on setting EFQM excellence model in an organization (the research case)? In according to the fuzzy QFD methods and the literature of this research, the following Hypothesizes were set: 1. The ranking of effective criteria on setting EFQM model in an organization (the research case) are the same in crisp and fuzzy approaches. 2. The ranking of effective management tools on setting EFQM excellence model in an organization (the research case) are the same in crisp and fuzzy approaches.

House of Excellence
(HOE)

Voice of Organization (VOO)

(1) Organization Needs for Excellence (ONE) (WHATs)

(3) Technical attributes for Excellence (TAE) (4) Relation between organizations needs (WHATs) and technical attributes for excellence (HOWs) (2) Prioritizing of organization needs for excellence

(5) Prioritizing of technical attributes for excellence

Fig. 2. Conceptual model of the research.

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Step 5 Generate Technical Attitude for excellence (HOWs) Step 3 Identify Competitors, Conduct organization Competitive Analysis & Set organization Performance Goals for WHATs

Step 1 Identify Organization Needs for excellence (WHATs)

Step 2 Determine Relative Importance Ratings of WHATs

Step 6 Determine Relationships Between WHATs and HOWs

Step 4 Determine Final Importance Ratings of WHATs

Step 7 Determine Initial Technical Ratings of HOWs Step 8 Conduct Technical Competitive Analysis & Set Technical Performance Goals for HOWs Step 9 Determine Final Technical Ratings of HOWs

Fig. 3. House of excellence (HOE): a 9-step model.

know how to satisfy your organization and thus how to keep your business successful and achieve excellence. Available methods to collect organization needs include focus group, individual interviews, listening and watching, and using existing information. It is suitable and economical to gather organization needs through focus group (American Supplier Institute, 1994). Grouping related organization needs into a category is helpful in analyzing the needs. Afnity Diagram (Cohen, 1995), a method of arranging random data into natural and logical groups, can be used to determine organization needs. Cluster analysis can also be used for this purpose (Grifn & Hauser, 1993). Usually organization needs can be organized as a tree-like structure with an increasing number of items moving from left/top (higher levels) to right/bottom (lower levels). Suppose that, through appropriate ways, K experts have been selected and M organization needs have been identied based on the opinions of these K experts. The M organization needs are denoted as W1, . . ., WM. These needs could be classied into some meaningful categories according to practical situation. Step 2. Determine the relative importance ratings of organization needs for excellence: Organization needs for excellence (WHATs) usually are of different degrees of importance and it is a common practice for the company to focus more on the important WHATs. The relative importance of the WHATs is usually expressed as a set of ratings that can be determined by letting the experts reveal their perceptions on the relative importance of the WHATs and then averaging their perceptions. The appropriate ways of obtaining experts perceptions are by analytic hierarchy process (AHP). AHP is

one of the most useful multi criteria decision making methods for rating alternatives. Step 3. Identify competitors and conduct organization competitive analysis: Competitors who produce the similar products should be identied by the company under study. Knowing the companys strengths and constraints in all aspects of excellence and in comparison with its main competitors is essential for a company if it wishes to improve its competitiveness in the relevant markets. This kind of information can be obtained by asking the experts to rate the relative performance of the company and its competitors on each WHAT and then to aggregate the expert ratings. Useful ways of conducting this kind of comparison analysis are also via questioner. Denote the company in question by C1. Suppose that L 1, competitors are identied, denoted as C2, . . ., CL. Then the K experts are requested to provide their perceptions on the relative performance of these L companies excellences criteria of the similar type in terms of the M organization needs. Suppose that expert k supplies a rating xmlk on company C1s performance in terms of Wm using scale (2), where xmlk is one of the nine crisp numbers or STFNs in scale (1). Then the performance rating of company C1 on organization needs for excellence Wm is given as:

X ml X ml1 X ml2 X mlK =K m 1; 2; . . . ; M; l 1; 2; . . . ; L

K X K1

X mlk =K; 1

very poor 1 [0,2] 2 [1,3]

poor 3 [2,4] 4 [3,5]

neutral 5 [4,6] 6 [5,7]

good 7 [6,8] 8 [7,9]

Very good 9
[8,10]

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Thus, the companies performance ratings on the customer needs can be denoted by an ML matrix, called customer comparison matrix:

Based on this X information, experts competitive priority ratings on the WHATs for the producing company C1 can be obtained, as e = (e1, e2, . . ., em) where em is company C1s priority rating on customer need Wm. This set of priority ratings derived by the more objective entropy method as introduced in the Appendix.

Step 6. Determine the relationships between HOWs and WHATs: This is an important work in HOE/QFD which is performed carefully and collectively by experts. The relationship between a HOW and a WHAT is usually determined by analyzing to what extent the HOW could technically related to and inuence the WHAT. All these relationships form a matrix with the WHATs as rows and the HOWs as columns. It is suitable to complete this matrix in a column- or HOW-wise manner since once a HOW is dened we usually begin establishing to what extents it relates to the WHATs (American Supplier Institute, 1994). Let the relationship value between technical attitude Hn and organizations need Wm be determined as rmn according to scale (4). Then we can form the following relationship matrix between the HOWs and the WHATs:

very weak 1 [0,2] 2 [1,3]

weak 3 [2,4] 4

moderate relation 5 [4,6] 6 [5,7]

strong 7 [6,8] 8 [7,9]

Very strong 9
[8,10]

[3,5]

According to company C1s current performance on the WHATs in relation to its competitors performance, performance goals on the WHATs can be set for the company. These goals should be set competitively and realistically by the company, which is a highly strategically activity involving many considerations from relevant management. Assume that for organization need Wm, a proper performance goal am has been set according to scale (1). Thus the company has a goal performance vector in terms of the organization needs, denoted as a = (a1; a2, . . ., aM). In most cases, each goal performance level should not be lower than current performance level, implying the need or desire for further improvement. From this we can also set the companys improvement ratio for Wm as um = am/xml. It is obvious that the higher the improvement ratio, the more the company should work on the WHAT, and thus the more important the WHAT for the company. Step 4. Determine the nal importance ratings of customer needs: organization needs for excellence with higher relative importance perceived by experts and higher competitive priorities and improvement ratios should receive higher attention. Thus, organization needs Wms nal importance rating for the company is determined jointly by its relative importance gm, competitive priority em and improvement ratio um as:

Step 7. Determine initial technical ratings of HOWs: Initial technical ratings of HOWs are decided by two factors, nal importance ratings of WHATs and the relationships between the HOWs and the WHATs. These ratings indicate the basic importance of the HOWs developed in relation to the WHATs. They are usually computed using the simple additive weighting (SAW) method. That is, for technical attitude Hn, its initial technical rating is computed as the following simple weighted average over its relationships with the WHATs:

tn f1 r 1n f2 r2n fM r Mn n 1; 2; . . . ; N:

M X m1

fm rmn ; 5

fm um g m em ;

m 1; 2; . . . ; M

WHATs with high such nal ratings indicate both importance and potential business benet to the company. Of course, a (weighted) sum of um, gm and em can also produce a reasonable fm, if preferred. In any case, we will denote the nal importance ratings for the organization needs as a vector, f = (f1, f2, . . ., fM). Step 5. Generate technical measures (HOWs): After organization reveal it needs for the product, the companys excellence team (experts) should develop a set of HOWs to capture the organization needs. HOWs could be generated from current organizations standards or selected by ensuring through causeanalysis that the HOWs are the rst-order causes for the WHATs (Hauser & Clausing, 1988). Assume that N technical attitude have been developed, denoted as H1, H2, . . ., HN. Their measurement units and improving directions should also be determined, which is usually easy to do and important for the company to conduct technical competitive analysis for the HOWs.

Other methods to obtain comprehensive ratings for a set of choices in relation to a number of performance criteria, such as the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) (Yoon & Hwang, 1995) and the operational competitiveness rating (OCRA) procedure (Parkan & Wu, 2000), can also be used to compute initial technical ratings (Chan & Wu, 1998). We will denote, in any case, the HOWs initial technical ratings by a vector, t = (t1, t2, . . ., tN). Step 8: Perform technical competitive analysis: Although some technical parameters and know-HOWs of the competitors organization cannot be easily obtained and some may even be kept condential, the producing company should make every effort to acquire this information and failing to do so may result in an unfavorable position for the company in the market place. In case of extreme difculty in obtaining the technical attributes for excellence of the competitors on some HOWs, careful technical assessments should be made to give reliable scores (in a suitable scale such as 4) representing the technical performance of the competitors products on the said HOWs. Let the technical parameter or performance score of company C1s excellence needs on technical attitude Hn be determined as

S. Yousee et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 96339647 Table 1 Quantitative descriptions of HOE model.

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Step 5 Technical Measures (HOWs): H1 H2 ... HN Step 1 Organization Needs for excellence (WHATs): W1 W2 ... WM

Step 2 Relative Importance Ratings (g): g1 g2 ... gM

Step 6 Relationships Between WHATs and HOWs (R): H1 H2 ... HN W1 r11 r12 ... r1N W2 r21 r22 ... r2N ... ... ... ... WM rM1 rM2 ... rMN
Step 7 Initial Technical Ratings (t): t1 t2 ... tN Step 8 Technical Competitive Analysis (Y): H1 H2 ... HN C1 y11 y21 ... yN1 C2 y12 y22 ... yN2 ... ... ... ... ... CL y1L y2L ... yNL (z) z1 z2 ... zN (b) b1 b2 ... bN (v) v1 v2 ... vN Step 9 Final Technical Ratings (s): s2 ... sN s1

Step 3 Organization Competitive analysis (X) C1 C2 ... CL (e) (a) (u) W1 x11 x12 ... x1L e1 a1 u1 W2 x21 x22 ... x2L e2 a2 u2 ... ... ... ... ... ... WM xM1 xM2 ... xML eM aM uM

Step 4 Final Importance Ratings (f): f1 f2 ... fM

ynl. Then we can form the technical comparison matrix of the companies excellence needs on the HOWs:

Step 9. Obtain nal technical ratings of the HOWs: Those HOWs with higher initial technical ratings (tns), higher technical competitive priorities (zns) and higher improvement ratios (vns) indicate working focuses and market opportunities for the producing company. Final technical rating is a useful measure to reect this point which, with respect to Hn, can be computed for the companys excellence by integrating all these factors using a formula similar to (3) for computing the nal importance ratings for the WHATs:

From this Y information technical competitive, priority ratings on the HOWs can be obtained for the producing company using the entropy method as described in the Appendix. We will denote these ratings as a vector, z = (z1, z2, . . ., zN), where zn represents the companys technical competitive priority with respect to Hn. Based on the above matrix Y, company C1 could also set performance goals on the HOWs. It should be noted that these goals are different from design specications. Essentially they represent levels of performance on the HOWs which the company believes is required for its level of excellence to be of technical competitiveness in the relevant markets in comparison with its competitors. The goals should also be reachable according to the companys technical resources. Suppose that the company sets a goal performance level bn on Hn, then we have a technical performance goal vector, b = (b1, b2, . . ., bN). Compared to these goals we can dene improvement ratios vns for the current performance of company on the HOWs: Vn = bn/yn1 for Hn to be maximized; or when bn P yn1 for Hn to meet target; Vn = yn1/bn for Hn to be minimized; or when bn < yn1 for Hn to meet target. Or in a uniform manner:

Sn V n t n z n ;

n 1; 2; . . . ; N

Thus we have a nal technical rating vector on the HOWs, s s1 ; s2 ; . . . ; sN . HOWs with higher nal technical ratings, implying greater importance for the companys excellence to be successful in the competitive markets. The above quantitative descriptions of our proposed HOE model are summarized in Table 1. In the next section, we will demonstrate step by step the concepts and operations of the model through an easy-to-understand automotive Iranian company. To make our HOE model fully operable, we will use fuzzy method to handle the vagueness of peoples linguistic assessments and entropy method to derive competitive priority ratings and also group analytic hierarchy process (GAHP) with both crisp and fuzzy approaches for determining the relative importance rating of excellence criteria or WHATs. A brief introduction to these three methods is given in the Appendix. 3.3. Population and data Total population of this research was selected from the experts of an automotive company as our case in this research. The total population was of 30 experts, and we obtained 30 valid responses. And data were collected from a self-constructed questioner.

V n maxfyn1 =bn g minfyn1 =bn g

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3.4. Measurement Data were collected from the experts and from all part of that company through a questionnaire. Following the QFD methodology, a questionnaire covering aspects of each steps of that methodology. The questionnaire method consists of the elaboration of a basic survey for QFD methodology in EFQM domain. Thus, all of the steps of QFD methodology assessed through several questions, which are evaluated on a scale (for instance, from 1 to 9 points). This approach enables the evaluation of the organizations commitment towards each criterion and management tools and relationships between management tools and enablers criteria to be carried out and provides a score that quanties the consistency between organizational needs and QFD model and the EFQM excellence model. Consequently, questionnaires are useful to generate a quality pattern and to identify discrepancies in the organizational needs for excellence results. After an exhaustive examination of a QFD methodology, the questionnaire was operationalised through four parts. These four parts were grouped into separately aggregated scales corresponding to each part. Cronbachs alpha ranged between 0.89 and 0.94, indicating that the items deal with the same underlying construct. The managers assessed the items using a ve-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (very low performance, very weak relation or absolutely not important) to 9 (very high performance, very strong relation, or absolutely important). The validity of questionnaire was checked by some experts that they were justied the validity of the questionnaire, so the validity of this research is content validity. 3.5. Statistical procedure In this research, we propose an alternative method for estimating the relationships between the enablers and the management tools with a QFD Model, based on the crisp and fuzzy approaches. So for testing the hypothesis of this research, we used spearman correlation coefcient, as this methodology implies the adoption of a global approach in the study of the EFQM Excellence Model. Spearman correlation coefcient analysis is a statistical multivariate technique that summarizes the relations between two sets of variables. If our data are not normally distributed or have ordered categories, we can choose Spearman, which measure the association between rank orders. Correlation coefcients range in value from 1 (a perfect negative relationship) and +1 (a perfect positive relationship). A value of 0 indicates no linear relationship. When interpreting your results, be careful not to draw any cause-andeffect conclusions due to a signicant correlation. Although spearman correlation coefcient can be conducted using standard statistical software (e.g. SPSS), in this paper we use spss.13. 4. Results and discussion In this section the questions of this research will answer and also hypothesizes of this research will be test step by step with HOE model. Complete QFD examples to fully illustrate the procedure of QFD do not appear frequently in the literature, but they

are helpful for practitioners to follow. Here we present an automotive Iranian company example to illustrate the concepts and computations in our proposed HOE model in details. An automotive Iranian company, called company C1, wishes to make an improvement level of its excellence in response to the competition of other competitors in the same district. HOE technique can help C1 make the appropriate decision resulting in better improvement. The basic idea is (i) to understand what are organization needs for excellence (such as EFQM enabler criteria like leadership, strategy, etc.) and then to identify the important ones through criteria analysis, and (ii) to associate the organizations needs for excellence with appropriate technical attitudes or solutions (such management tools like strategic management, production management, etc.) and then to nd the important ones through technical analyses. In what follows we will build the HOE model for this example step by step according to the qualitative and quantitative descriptions in Section 3. Question 1: What are the effective criteria on setting EFQM excellence model in an organization? Step 1: At rst the company must determine the experts to reveal their various perceptions about the questions. Here, for illustration purpose, thirty experts of the company from all part of the company are selected to help conduct the HOQ analysis (i.e., K = 30). By a complete literature review about the effective criteria on setting EFQM mode, ve enabler criteria of EFQM model as organizations needs for excellence (ONE) or WHATs are found (i.e., M = 5). They are: leadership, strategy, employee, sharing & resources and processes. Question 2: What are the ranking of effective criteria on setting EFQM excellence model in an organization (the research case)? Step 2: The ve WHATs can hardly be of same importance to the organization. So by use of pair wises comparison between each tow criteria, the thirty experts are asked to reveal their perceptions on the relative importance of the ve WHATs using the ve linguistic terms in scale, so each expert should answer ten questions in pair wise form and then by use of group analytic hierarchy process (GAHP), the relative importance of each criteria were calculated. Table 2 shows the nal pair wises comparison of all the aggregation of experts and the relative importance of each enabler criteria with crisp numbers. Table 3(a) shows the nal fuzzy pair wises and Table 3(b) shows the fuzzy relative importance of each criterion with fuzzy numbers which are the results of using a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP), as shown in Appendix. Suppose that expert 1 rates the importance of W1 by comparison to W2 as high. Using scale (2), these linguistic assessments of the WHATs relative importance can be converted to crisp numbers or symmetrical triangular fuzzy members (STFNs) according to practical need. For example, expert 1 considers W1 as having high importance than W2, which can be represented by a crisp number 7 or an STFN [6, 8] according to scale (2) so we show this kind of fuzzy numbers as M = (l,m,u). for above example it can be represented by (6,7,8) as a STFN.

Table 2 Relative importance of each criterion by a GAHP method with crisp numbers.

S. Yousee et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 96339647 Table 3a Final fuzzy comparisons matrix of criterion.

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Table 3b Fuzzy relative importance of each criterion by a FGAHP method. Criteria Fuzzy relative importance L W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 0.065588 0.079553 0.105682 0.195478 0.202162 M 0.094353 0.115859 0.156506 0.311328 0.321954 U 0.124516 0.166 0.220246 0.501182 0.530163 0.0947 0.11932 0.15974 0.32983 0.34406 9.04 11.39 15.25 31.48 32.84 Defuzzied relative importance Relative importance (g f ) w

Table 4 Final excellence competitive analysis matrix X = [xml]57. WHATS W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 C1 6.46 5.56 5.33 5.93 5.53 C2 5.46 5.40 5.46 5.20 5.06 C3 4.93 4.53 4.96 4.66 4.80 C4 5.56 5.26 5.23 5.03 5.23 C5 5.66 5.36 5.73 5.20 5.46 C6 4.16 3.83 4.06 3.86 4.60 C7 6.90 6.70 6.53 6.53 6.83 em 0.200003 0.199318 0.200302 0.199979 0.200399

Applying the entropy method as illustrated in the Appendix, we can obtain company C1s competitive priority ratings on the 5 organizations needs for excellence based on the above excellence comparison matrix X. For example, the leadership of W1 on the seven companies excellence performance is composed of the seven companies performance ratings on W1: (6.46, 5.46, 4.93, 5.56, 5.66, 4.16, 6.90), which is the rst row of matrix X. Then we can compute the total score of W1: x1 = x11 + x12, . . ., + x16 + x17 = 6.46+ 5.46 +, . . ., + 4.16 + 6.90 = 39.17, and obtain the probability leadership of W1: P11 = X11/X1 = 6.46/39.17 = 0.165106 P12 = X12/X1 = 5.46/39.17 = 0.139574 P13 = X13/X1 = 4.93/39.17 = 0.125957 P14 = X14/X1 = 5.56/39.17 = 0.142128 P15 = X15/X1 = 5.66/39.17 = 0.144681 P16 = X16/X1 = 4.16/39.17 = 0.106383 P17 = X17/X1 = 6.90/39.17 = 0.176170 The entropy of W1 is then computed using (A.20) as:

The AHP methodology of Satty (1980) provides a consistency ration to measure any inconsistency whit in the judgments in each comparison matrix as well as for the entire hierarchy. The ration can be use to indicate whether or not the largest can be arranged in an appropriate order of ranking and how consistent are the pair wise comparison matrixes. If the calculated consistency rate of a nal comparison matrix is less than 0.1, then the consistency of the pairwise judgment can be thought as being acceptable. Otherwise the judgments expressed by the experts are considered to be inconsistent, and the decision makers have to repeat the pairwise comparisons. In this research after calculating the consistency rate of the entire comparison matrix and also the nal comparison matrix that made by a geometric mean method, it was found they are all less than 0.1. Therefore, the consistency of the judgment in all the comparison matrices is acceptable. Step 3: This step is for company C1 to identify competitors and conduct excellence competitive analysis. In the districts automotive market, company C1 has six main competitors, called company C2, C3, C4, C5, C6 and C7, each of which makes a similar type of products. In order to understand the automotive market and its relative position in the market, and to nally nd out the priorities for further improvement, company C1 asks all the experts to rate the relative performance of its own company and the six competitors similar products in terms of the ve WHATs using scale (2). For example, expert 1 rates the performance of C2s performances on W3 as neutral using scale (2), which corresponds to a crisp number of 5, i.e., X321 = 5. We will not consider using STFNs to represent performance assessments since it is too complex to incorporate STFNs into the following entropy computations. The nal excellence competitive analysis of the thirty experts assessments are shown in Table 4, where, according to the thirty assessments of the relative performance of the seven company similar products in terms of the 5 WHATs, a excellence comparison matrix X = [Xmn]57 can be obtained by averaging the customers assessments.

EW 1 U

7 X l1

Pl1 lnPl1

0:165106 ln 0:165106 0:17617 ln 0:17617 1:93442

We can obtain in the same way the entropy for each of the 5 organizations needs for excellence as:

EW 1 ; EW 2 ; . . . ; EW 5 1:93444; 1:92782; 1:93734; 1:93421; 1:9383

Finally, according to (A.21) we can obtain company C1s competitive priority ratings on the Wjs:

e e1 ; e2 ; . . . ; e5 0:200003; 0:199318; 0:200302; 0:199979; 0:200399

where, for example,

e1 EW 1 =

EW m 1:93444=1:93444 1:9383

1:3137=9:05144 0:200003
This set of competitive priority ratings are shown in the last column of Table 4 from which we know that W5 is of the highest competitive priority for the company, followed by W3; W4 and W2.

9640 Table 5 Improvement ratio of WHATs. WHATs W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 am 8 7 7 7 7

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U = GOAL/Xm1 1.23711 1.25749 1.31250 1.17978 1.26506

Applied to a triangular fuzzy number FN = (fL, fM, fU), for defuzzication of a STFN, the Facchinetti, Ghiselli Ricci, and Muzioli (1998) approach produces a score identied by the value:

Score fL 2f M fU =4 f f1 ;2 ; f3 ; f4 ; f5 0:023432; 0:029906; 0:041994; 0:077817; 0:087224

So the nal importance of WHATs is as:

Based on the resources available and the relative performance of the seven company on the 5 WHATs, company C1 can set improving goals on each WHAT to better satisfy the organizations needs for excellence. After various considerations, company C1 decides the following performance goals on the WHATs using scale (2):

W5 > W4 > W3 > W2 > W1

Both sets of ratings indicate that W5 is the most important WHAT, followed by W4 and W3. But the crisp approach show that W1 is more important than W2 but in fuzzy approach W2 is more important than W1. These nal importance ratings of the WHATs, expressed as both crisp numbers and STFNs, are shown in the second column of Table 6. Hypothesize 1: The ranking of effective criteria on setting EFQM model in an organization (the research case) are the same in crisp and fuzzy approaches. In order to be comparable, the crisp and fuzzy nal importance ratings are tested by spearman correlation coefcient. According to the Table 6, with percentage results of crisp and fuzzy ranking, the spearman coefcient correlation for these tow type of data is 0.9 and there is a very strong positive correlation between fuzzy and crisp importance ranking. So the rst hypothesis of this research that maintains: The ranking results of effective criteria on setting EFQM model in an organization (the research case) are the same in crisp and fuzzy approaches. were supported. Question 3: what are the effective management tools on setting EFQM excellence model in an organization? Step 5: Now it is time to convert organizations needs for excellence (ONE) into technical attributes specications. After careful considerations and literature review (Darrell, 2007; EFQM, 2000; Ignacio, 2005), 15 technical attributes for excellence (HOWs) that relate to and can help realize the ve WHATs are proposed as: H1 = inventory management H2 = total quality management H3 = human resources management H4 = knowledge management H5 = technology management H6 = information management H7 = energy management H8 = project management H9 = nancial management H10 = change management H11 = customers relationship management H12 = supply chain management H13 = business process management H14 = strategic management H15 = production management Question 4: what are the ranking of the effective management tools on setting EFQM excellence model in an organization (the research case)? Step 6: Then the experts begin to establish the relationships between the HOWs and the WHATs, or to examine to what extent each HOW is related to each WHAT. This step is usually done simultaneously with Step 5 since in the process of generating HOWs, each

a a1 ; a2 ; a3 ; a4 ; a5 8; 7; 7; 7; 7
This set of goals is shown in Table 5. It is noted that all goal performance levels are higher than C1s current performance levels represented by the rst column of excellence comparison matrix X. If C1s performance on a WHAT is poorer or much poorer than the performance of most of its competitors, then the goal level is set to be much higher than its current level to be of competitiveness. Otherwise, if C1s performance on a WHAT is better than the performance of most of its competitors, then the goal level is only set to be slightly higher than its current level which is enough for C1 to keep and enhance its established competitiveness. We do not consider setting goals in STFN form either, since these results in some computational and explanatory difculties. According to company C1s current and goal performance levels on the ve WHATs, its improvement ratios with respect to the organizations needs for excellence can be easily computed according to the formula um = am/xm1:

u u1 ; u2 ; u3 ; u4 ; u5 1:2371; 1:2575; 1:3125; 1:1798; 1:2651

Step 4: According to each WHATs relative importance rating, competitive priority rating and improvement ratio, company C1 could now reach the nal importance rating of the WHAT using (3). In case that the relative importance ratings are crisp numbers, the nal importance ratings are also given as the following crisp numbers:

f f1 ; f2 ; f3 ; f4 ; f5 0:0286; 0:02807; 0:0369; 0:0680; 0:0870

Here, for example, the nal importance rating of W1 in crisp form, f1, is computed by (3) as:

f1 u1 g 1 e1 1:23711 0:1157 0:200003 0:0286

From f we can nally rank the importance of the ve WHATs in the following order:

W5 > W4 > W3 > W1 > W2

where > means more important than. If relative importance ratings are STFNs, nal importance ratings are also given as STFNs:
f f f f f f f f1 ; f2 ; f3 ; f4 ; f5

0:016228; 0:030808; 0:019939; 0:041606; 0:027784; 0:0579; 0:046119; 0:118244; 0:051251; 0:134405
Here, for example, the nal importance rating of W1 in STFN form, f f1, is computed by (3) and the scalar multiplication rule of STFNs as:
f f1 u1 g f1 e1 1:2371 0:065; 0:124 0:200003

0:016228; 0:03808

S. Yousee et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 96339647 Table 6 Normalization and determine the percentages of the ve WHATs. WHATs Crisp (fM) Crisp weights W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 0.0286 0.02807 0.0369 0.0680 0.0870 Nor. 0.115058 0.112926 0.148449 0.273565 0.350002 Per. % 11.50 11.30 14.84 27.36 35.00
f Fuzzy (fM )

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Fuzzy weights [0.016,0.030] [0.020,0.042] [0.028,0.058] [0.046,0.118] [0.051,0.134]

Defuzzi. 0.023432 0.029906 0.041994 0.077817 0.087224

Nor. 0.089994 0.114858 0.161284 0.298867 0.334996

Per. % 9.00 11.47 16.13 29.90 33.50

Table 7 Final relationship matrix between WHATs and HOWs with both crisp and STFNs. Final matrix WHATs W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 HOWs L 4.1 3.7 4.1 5.0 4.7 L 4.8 4.6 4.1 4.2 4.9 L 4.5 4.6 3.4 4.2 4.0 L 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.6 5.0 L 5.1 4.3 5.1 5.5 5.0 Inventory management 5.1 4.7 5.1 6.0 5.7 Knowledge management 5.8 5.6 5.1 5.2 5.9 Energy management 5.5 5.6 4.4 5.2 5.0 Change management 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.6 6.0 Business process management 6.1 5.3 6.1 6.5 6.0 U 6.1 5.7 6.1 7.0 6.7 U 6.8 6.6 6.1 6.2 6.9 U 6.5 6.6 5.4 6.2 6.0 U 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.6 7.0 U 7.1 6.3 7.1 7.5 7.0 L 5.5 4.4 4.5 3.7 4.7 L 4.5 4.1 5.1 5.3 5.0 L 3.9 4.0 4.0 4.0 3.8 L 4.5 4.2 5.1 4.9 4.1 L 4.7 3. 5.5 4.3 4.8 Total quality management 6.5 5.4 5.5 4.7 5.7 Technology management 5.5 5.1 6.1 6.3 6.0 Project management 4.9 5.0 5.0 5.0 4.8 Customer relationship management 5.5 5.2 6.1 5.9 5.1 Strategic management 5.7 4.9 6.5 5.3 5.8 U 7.5 6.4 6.5 5.7 6.7 U 6.5 6.1 7.1 7.3 7.0 U 5.9 6.0 6.0 6.0 5.8 U 6.5 6.2 7.1 6.9 6.1 U 6.7 5.9 7.5 6.3 6.8 L 6.2 5.6 4.8 4.0 4.2 L 5.1 5.1 4.4 4.8 4.4 L 5.3 4.5 4.8 5.0 5.0 L 4.4 3.6 4.3 5.0 4.0 L 4.0 4.2 5.2 6.0 6.0 Human resource management 7.2 6.6 5.8 5.0 5.2 Information management 6.1 6.1 5.4 5.8 5.4 Financial management 6.3 5.5 5.8 6.1 6.0 Supply chain management 5.4 4.6 5.3 6.0 5.8 Production management 5.0 5.2 6.2 7.0 7.0 U 8.2 7.6 6.8 6.0 6.2 U 7.1 7.1 6.4 6.8 6.4 U 7.3 6.5 6.8 7.1 7 U 6.4 5.6 6.3 7.0 6.8 U 6.0 6.2 7.2 8.0 8.0

HOWs relationships with the WHATs are always examined once the HOW is considered. The relationships between the HOWs and the WHATs are determined by technical analysis and empirical judgment, and usually may not be precise. So it is quite appropriate to use STFNs to represent this kind of relationships. For each HOW with respect to each WHAT, the experts determine the relationship rst in linguistic term using scale (4) and then convert this relationship into corresponding crisp number and STFN, for example, the expert consider the relationship between H1 and W1 as very strong that corresponds to a crisp number of 9 and an STFN [8, 10]. The full matrix of these relationships, both in crisp numbers and STFNs, are shown in Table 7 where be obtained by averaging the expert assessments about the relationship between WHATs and HOWs. Step 7: According to the WHATs nal importance ratings and the relationship values between the HOWs and the WHATs, the HOWs initial technical ratings can be computed usually through the simple additive weighting (SAW) formula (5). When crisp numbers are used, the initial technical ratings are given as

Here, for example, crisp initial technical rating of H1, t1, is computed as the weighted average over H1s crisp relationship values with the ve WHATs, r11, r21, . . ., r51, which correspond to the crisp part of the relationship matrix that is bolded in Table 7, and the weights are the crisp nal importance ratings of the ve WHATs, f1, f2, . . ., f5, i.e.,

t1

5 X m1

fm r m1

0:0286 5:1 0:02807 4:7 0:0369 5:1 0:068 6:0 0:087 5:7 1:38
From these crisp initial technical ratings, the technical measures (HOWs) can be ranked in the following order:

H15 > H13 > H9 > H5 > H10 > H6 > H14 > H12 > H11 > H3 > H1 > H4 > H 2 > H 7 > H 8 9

If fuzzy numbers of the relationship matrix are used, the fuzzy initial technical ratings are also given as STFNs:

t t 1 ; . . . ; t 15 1:38; 1:35; 1:40; 1:38; 1:48; 1:42; 1:27; 1:23; 1:49; 1:44; 1:39; 1:40; 1:51; 1:41; 1:61

tf 0:73; 2:52; 0:72; 2:46; 0:75; 2:52; 0:73; 2:51; 0:8; 2:67; 0:76; 2:57; 0:66; 2:33; 0:64; 2:28; 0:8; 2:68; 0:77; 2:60; 0:74; 2:52; 0:74; 2:55; 0:82; 2:72; 0:76; 2:56; 0:88; 2:89

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Table 8 The crisp and fuzzy initial technical rating of HOWs. HOWs L tf tf 0.73 L tf tf 0.73 L tf tf 0.66 L tf tf 0.77 L tf tf 0.82 Business process management 1.51 2.72 0.76 Change management 1.43 2.60 U 0.74 L Strategic management 1.41 2.56 0.88 Energy management 1.26 2.33 U 0.64 L Customer relationship management 1.39 2.52 U 0.74 L Production management 1.61 2.89 Knowledge management 1.38 2.5 U 0.79 L Project management 1.23 2.2 U 0.80 L Supply chain management 1.40 2.55 U Inventory management 1.38 2.52 U 0.72 L Technology management 1.48 2.6 0.76 L Financial management 1.49 2.68 U U L Total quality management 1.35 2.46 U 0.75 L Information management 1.42 2.56 U U L Human resource management 1.4 2.52 U U

Table 9 Final technical competitive analysis matrix Y = [ynl]157. HOWs Strategic management Business process management Supply chain management Customer relationship management Change management Financial management Project management Energy management Information management Technology management Knowledge management Human resource management Total quality management Inventory management Production management C1 5.56 6.30 6.53 6.13 5.20 6.03 5.63 5.16 5.13 4.80 5.03 5.76 5.70 5.36 6.46 C2 5.00 5.06 5.30 5.46 4.73 4.43 5.03 4.4 4.86 4.70 5.10 4.83 5.16 4.83 5.23 C3 4.43 3.86 5.03 5.10 4.76 4.86 4.80 4.70 4.66 4.63 4.50 4.53 4.23 4.96 5.03 C4 4.96 5.20 5.33 5.20 4.60 5.23 4.83 4.86 5.13 5.00 5.03 5.33 4.86 4.90 5.26 C5 5.40 5.33 5.56 5.60 4.66 5.33 5.10 5.3 4.96 4.93 4.93 5.50 5.23 5.16 5.23 C6 4.50 4.66 4.76 4.33 4.33 4.73 5.00 4.63 4.6 4.4 4.86 4.76 4.56 4.93 5.13 C7 6.43 6.20 6.66 6.70 6.36 6.66 6.56 6.13 6.9 6.46 6.53 6.60 6.53 6.23 7.03

Here, for example, the initial technical rating of H1 in STFN form, t f1 , is computed as the weighted average over H1s STFN form relationship values with the ve WHATs, rf11 ,rf21 ; . . . ; r f51 , which correspond to the rst column of the STFN form relationship matrix Rf, and the weights are the nal importance ratings of the ve WHATs in f f f STFN form, f1 ; f2 . . . f5 , i.e.,

t f1

5 X m1

f fm r fm1

0:016; 0:0308 4:1; 6:1 0:05; 0:134 4:7; 6:7 0:73; 2:52
According to the principle in the Appendix, these fuzzy ratings have the following ranking order for the HOWs initial importance:

mance on the HOWs, company C1 must try all the means to obtain this valuable information in order to know its technical strengths and weaknesses and hence to improve or enhance its competitiveness. Through a lot of efforts company C1 obtains all the technical parameters of its own and its competitors in terms of the 15 HOWs. This information forms a technical comparison matrix Y = [ynl]157 as shown in Table 9. Applying entropy method to Y in the same manner as in excellence competitive analysis (Step 3), technical competitive priority ratings can be obtained for company C1 on the 15 HOWs:

z z1 ; z2 ; . . . ; z14 ; z15 0:071431; 0:071285; 0:071443; . . . ; 0:07157; 0:071409

From these ratings which we know that H9; H15 and H5 are of the highest competitive priorities. According to the technical performance of its own and the other six competitors company in terms of the 15 HOWs, company C1 could set technical performance goal on each of the HOWs for itself. To better fulll the customer needs. These goals should be determined both competitively and realistically. Company C1s relevant experts agree with the following performance goals on the HOWs for further improvement:

H15 > H13 > H9 > H5 > H10 > H6 > H14 > H12 > H11 > H3 > H1 > H 4 > H 2 > H 7 > H8 10

It is noticed from (9) and (10) that the crisp and fuzzy ratings exhibit the same ranking order. Both sets of ratings indicate that H15 is of the highest initial importance, followed by H13, H9 and H5. The crisp and fuzzy initial technical ratings of the 15 HOWs are shown in Table 8. Step 8: Now turn to technical competitive analysis which is to nd and establish competitive advantages or to further enhance the existing advantages for company C1, through comparing all the company similar products in terms of their technical performance on the 15 identied HOWs. Although it is always not easy to acquire the technical performance levels of competitors perfor-

b b1 ; b2 ; . . . ; b14 ; b15 7; 8; 8; 8; 7; 8; 7; 7; 7; 6; 7; 7; 7; 7; 8
From these goal (bn) and current (yn1) technical performance levels, improvement ratios for company C1 to be competitive in terms of the HOWs can be easily computed using (6) as:

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v v 1 ; v 2 ; . . . ; v 14 ; v 15
1:25749; 1:26984; . . . ; 1:30435; 1:23711
Step 9: This is the last step of our proposed HOE model. Integrating the initial technical ratings, technical competitive priority ratings and improvement ratios of the HOWs, nal technical ratings can be computed by (7). If initial technical ratings are crisp numbers, the nal technical ratings are also crisp numbers and given as:

caused by the setting of performance goals (bns) or improvement ratios (vns): (i) H15s improvement ratio (1.23711) is lower than H9s (1.3636), and (ii) H8s improvement ratio (1.3548) is higher than H7s (1.2426). If initial technical ratings are STFNs, then the nal technical ratings are also given as STFNs:

sf sf1 ; . . . ; sf15 0:066; 0:227; 0:065; 0:223; . . . ; 0:071; 0:239; 0:078; 0:256:
Here, for example, the nal technical rating of H1 in STFN form, sf1, is computed by (7) and the arithmetic of STFNs as:

s s1 ; s2 ; . . . ; s14 ; s15 0:12411; 0:12247; . . . ; 0:13315; 0:13205

Here, for example, the nal technical rating of H1 in crisp form, s1, is computed by (7) as:

s1 v 1 t 1 z1 1:25749 1:38 0:071431 0:12411

From s we can rank the nal technical importance of the nine HOWs in the following order:

sf1

v1

t f1 z1 1:25749 0:73; 2:52 0:071431

0:066; 0:227
These fuzzy ratings produce the following ranking order for the HOWs nal importance:

H9 > H15 > H5 > H11 > H6 > H13 > H14 > H10 > H4 > H1 > H3 > H2 > H12 > H8 > H7 11

H9 > H15 > H5 > H11 > H6 > H13 > H14 > H10 > H4 > H1 > H3 > H2 > H12 > H8 > H7 : 12

This nal technical importance order differs from the initial technical importance order (9) in two aspects: (i) H15 is of higher initial technical importance but lower nal technical importance than H9; and (ii) H8 is of lower initial technical importance but high nal technical importance than H7. Since technical competitive priority ratings (zns) do not vary too much, these two differences are mainly

Table 10 Crisp and fuzzy nal technical ratings of the 15 HOWs. HOWs Final technical ratings Crisp (sn) H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6 H7 H8 H9 H10 H11 H12 H13 H14 H15 0.124113 0.122475 0.122697 0.128393 0.142687 0.134406 0.112604 0.119689 0.145276 0.128473 0.138175 0.121494 0.133152 0.132053 0.142942 Fuzzy (sf ) n Scaled nal technical ratings Crisp (sn) 0.854326 0.843047 0.844581 0.883786 0.982174 0.925178 0.77510 0.82387 1.00000 0.884335 0.951116 0.836298 0.916544 0.908977 0.983933 Fuzzy (sf ) n [0.252, 0.868] [0.249, 0.853] [0.252, 0.846] [0.261, 0.897] [0.294, 0.987] [0.276, 0.930] [0.225, 0.794] [0.238, 0.847] [0.301, 1.000] [0.264, 0.889] [0.282, 0.959] [0.247, 0.847] [0.276, 0.915] [0.271, 0.914] [0.299, 0.980]

[0.066, 0.227] [0.065, 0.223] [0.066, 0.220] [0.068, 0.233] [0.077, 0.257] [0.072, 0.243] [0.059, 0.207] [0.062, 0.221] [0.079, 0.261] [0.069, 0.232] [0.074, 0.251] [0.065, 0.221] [0.072, 0.239] [0.071, 0.239] [0.078, 0.256]

It is noticed from (11) and (12) that the crisp and fuzzy ratings show an almost identical ranking order for the HOWs nal technical importance. Both sets of ratings indicate that H9 is the most important HOW, followed by H15 and then by H11 and H6, and that H7 is the least important HOW, preceded by H38 and H12. These crisp and fuzzy nal technical ratings of the HOWs are shown in Table 10. In order to be comparable, they are both scaled to have maximum rating or upper limit of unity, which are also shown in Table 10. From these scaled ratings we can see again that, although the crisp and fuzzy ratings exhibit an identical trend, crisp ratings always tend to be close to the upper limits of the corresponding fuzzy ratings. This shows that fuzzy ratings are more representative of the possible variations of the HOWs technical importance, which would make the technical improvement more exible and the design process more feasible. The above nine steps complete the HOE process for improving the companys improvement trends on excellence. The corresponding tables of results, after appropriate arrangement, can form an HOE like Fig. 2 which links organization needs to technical considerations and exhibits all the relevant elements and their relationships. As a result of this HOE model, it is concluded that H7 could be deleted from further consideration (in QFDs second phase, parts deployment) to save technical efforts without decreasing organization satisfaction. If resource or budget considerations require to further cut down the number of HOWs,

Table 11 Normalization and determine the percentages of the 15 HOWs. HOWs Crisp (sn) Crisp weights H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6 H7 H8 H9 H10 H11 H12 H13 H14 H15 0.124113 0.122475 0.122697 0.128393 0.142687 0.134406 0.112604 0.119689 0.145276 0.128473 0.138175 0.121494 0.133152 0.132053 0.142942 Nor. 0.063693 0.062852 0.062966 0.065889 0.073224 0.068975 0.057786 0.061422 0.074553 0.06593 0.070909 0.062349 0.068331 0.067767 0.073355 Per. % 6.36926 6.28517 6.29661 6.58889 7.32241 6.89749 5.77861 6.1422 7.45531 6.59299 7.09086 6.23485 6.83312 6.7767 7.33552 Fuzzy (sfn) Fuzzy weights [0.066,0.227] [0.065,0.223] [0.066,0.220] [0.068,0.233] [0.077,0.257] [0.072,0.243] [0.059,0.207] [0.062,0.221] [0.079,0.261] [0.069,0.232] [0.074,0.251] [0.065,0.221] [0.072,0.239] [0.071,0.239] [0.078,0.256] Defuzzi. 0.135156 0.133169 0.13305 0.139687 0.154875 0.145948 0.122847 0.130701 0.157568 0.139532 0.150141 0.132208 0.144356 0.143414 0.154942 Nor. 0.063825 0.062887 0.062831 0.065965 0.073137 0.068922 0.058013 0.061721 0.074409 0.065892 0.070902 0.062433 0.06817 0.067725 0.073169 Per. % 6.38254 6.288714 6.283073 6.59649 7.313718 6.892164 5.801264 6.172143 7.440888 6.589179 7.090178 6.243329 6.816961 6.772494 7.316866

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H8; H12 and H2 form a good deleting order that will not signicantly inuence the fulllment of the organization needs. And also, according to the Table 10, by use of these crisp and fuzzy importances, the importance weighting of each management tool can be computed. In this way, rst of all, the crisp importance values of management tools should be normalized, and then the percentages of them should be calculated. But for the fuzzy importance values, at rst, the defuzzication of the fuzzy values of management tools should be determined, for this step has done by the Facchinetti et al. (1998) approach, and then the normalization and determine the percentage of them, should be done (see Table 11). Hypothesize 2: The ranking results of effective management tools on setting EFQM excellence model in an organization (the research case) are the same in crisp and fuzzy approaches. In order to be comparable, the crisp and fuzzy nal importance ratings are tested by spearman correlation coefcient. According to the Table 11, with percentage results of crisp and fuzzy ranking, the spearman coefcient correlation for these tow type of data is 0.993 and there is a very strong positive correlation between fuzzy and crisp importance ranking. So the rst hypothesis of this research that maintains: The ranking results of effective management tools on setting EFQM excellence model in an organization (the research case) are the same in crisp and fuzzy approaches., were supported.

5. Conclusions Using the useful management tools that are relevant to the organizations needs for excellence has become so important. By choosing and applying the best management tools among too

many management tools, companies can improve their performances and then increase customer satisfaction and gain market shares. But for the organizations, that adopted excellence models such as EFQM, to improve their performances, selection and choosing these management tools has been a big challenge in todays dynamic environment. This paper presents a systematic and operational approach to HOE to help resolve this problem. This study has addressed the applicability of QFD in the organizational excellence context. More specically, an original methodology has been proposed and adopted to rank viable EFQM excellence criteria and the management tools a rm can undertake to improve excellence performances. The methodology developed could be rightly considered as a useful tool for selecting the most efcient and effective management tools leverages to reach organizational excellence. We propose a 9-step HOE model, which is basically a QFD model, to unify the HOE process and a few 9-point scales to unify the measurements in HOE to avoid arbitrariness and incomparability. We especially address the various voices in the HOE process and suggest the use of symmetrical triangular fuzzy numbers (STFNs) to reect the vagueness in experts linguistic assessments. Furthermore, we employ the quantitative entropy method to conduct competitive analysis and derive competitive priority ratings. All information required, computations involved and feasible methods are clearly indicated to give an applicable framework for practitioners to perform HOE analysis without confusions and difculties. To fully illustrate our proposed HOE model, we present an automotive company example that involves ve organizational needs for excellence (EFQM enabler criteria), 15 technical attributes for excellence (management tools) and seven competitor companies. In a similar manner, the weighted importance of management tools allows the rm to identify the key factors of intervention in order to improve the perceived excellence. As an example, pro-

Inventory management (6.38) Total quality management (6.29) Leadership (9.00) Human resources management (6.28) Knowledge management (6.60) Strategy (11.47) Technology management (7.31) Information management (6.89) Energy management (5.80) Employee (16.13) Project management (6.17) Financial management (7.44) Change management (6.59) Resources (29.90) Customer relationship management (7.09) Supply chain management (6.24) Business process management (6.82) Processes (33.50) Strategic management (6.77) Production management (7.32)
Fig. 4. The basis for programming and organizational resources allocation for excellence.

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cesses emerges in step 4 as the most important factor from experts point of view, and it should be considered as the key excellence criterion to improve the performance of the organization. In order to assess and rank viable management tools, in the approach proposed we have introduced entropy method, which considers the competition of implementation for each what and how. The entropy can be directly adopted as a synthesis parameter to select the most suitable EFQM enabler criteria and management tools that have the most competitive importance to implement. According to step 3 and step 8, it is considered that WHATs and HOWs, both of them have the same competitive importance. Since personal judgments are required when building the HOE, fuzzy logic has been adopted as a useful tool. Through fuzzy logic linguistic judgments an expert gives to weights, relationships and correlations have been appropriately translated into triangular a fuzzy number. Moreover, fuzzy logic has allowed to cope well with uncertainties and incomplete understanding of the relationships between WHATs and between HOWs and WHATs. In addition, fuzzy logic becomes fundamental to dealing with several parameters that seem difcult to express in a quantitative measure. As an example, detailed information about relationships between management tools and EFQM excellence criteria are usually not available, while linguistic judgments on them can be easily obtained. By use of the fuzzy importance percents ranking of EFQM criteria and management tools, from Tables 6 and 11, the basis for programming and allocating of organization resources for the improving of excellence performances, can provided. It is shown in Fig. 4. The methodology proposed does not deal with the practical implementation of management tools. Future work may be thus directed to extend a similar QFD approach from a strategic level to tactical and operational ones. Specially, future work can extend sub-set of each management tools in to the other phases of QFD approach. Appendix A A.1. Fuzzy methods Fuzzy set theory was developed for solving problems in which descriptions of objects are subjective, vague and imprecise, i.e., no boundaries for the objects can be well dened. Let X = {x} be a traditional set of objects, called the universe. A fuzzy set e in X is characterized by a membership function lex that E E associates each object in X with a membership value in the interval [0, 1], indicating the degree of the object belonging to e A fuzzy number is a special fuzzy set when the universe X E. is the real line R1 : 1 < x < +1. A symmetrical triangular fuzzy number (STFN), denoted as e 0; 1, is a special fuzzy number E with the following symmetrical triangular type of membership function:

This means that, for example, the membership value or possibility that leadership is assigned a number 9 is l[8,10](9) = 1, the possibility that leadership is assigned a number 8.5 or 9.5 is l[8,10](8.5) = 0.5 or l[8,10](9.5) = 0.5. So assigning leadership a number 8.5 or 9.5 is acceptable or possible to the degree of 50%. The basic arithmetic rules for STFNs are as follows:

Addition : a; b c; d a c; b d Subtraction : a; b c; d a c; b d Scalar multiplication : k a; b ka; kb k > 0 Multiplication : a; b c; d % ac; bd; Division : a; b c; d % a=c; b=d; a!0c!0

A:3 A:4 A:5 A:6 A:7

a ! 0; c > 0

e e For any two STFNs, E 1 = [a, b] and, E 2 = [c, d], if one interval is not strictly contained by another then their ranking order can be easily and intuitively determined. That is  If d > b and c P a, or d P b and c > b, then e 2 > e 1 , where > E E means is more importance or preferred than.  If a = c, b = d, then e 2 e 1 E E But if one interval is strictly contained by another, i.e., if d < b and c > a, or d > b and c < a, then the ranking problem becomes complex and many possibilities may occur. For more details about fuzzy set theory, STFNs and fuzzy ranking methods, see Zimmermann (1987). A.2. Fuzzy AHP To apply the process depending on this hierarchy, according to the method of Changs (1996) extent analysis, each criterion is taken and extent analysis for each criterion, gi; is performed on, respectively. Therefore, m extent analysis values for each criterion can be obtained by using following notation (Kahraman, Cebeci, & Ruan, 2004):

M1 ; M2 ; M3 ; . . . ; Mm gi gi gi gi
where gi is the goal set (i = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, . . ., n) and all the Mjgi (j = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, . . ., m) are triangular fuzzy numbers (TFNs). The steps of Changs analysis can be given as in the following. Step 1: The fuzzy synthetic extent value (Si) with respect to the ith criterion is dened as Eq. (A.8)

Si

m X j1

M jgi

" n m XX
i1 j1

#1 Mjgi A:8

lex 1 j x c a=2 j =c a=2; a E

A:1

To obtain Eq. (A.9);

m X j1

STFN is widely used in practice to represent a fuzzy set or concept e = approximately b where b = (a + c)/2. For example, if an EFQM E enabler criterion leadership is rated as having very high importance by a decision maker, then traditionally we may assign leadership a number 9 using crisp scale. To capture the vagueness of the decision makers subjective assessment, we can according to the same scale assign leadership an STFN [8, 10] which means approximately 9 and is represented by the following membership function:

M jgi

A:9

Perform the fuzzy addition operation of m extent analysis values for a particular matrix given in Eq. (A.10) below, at the end step of calculation, new (l, m, u) set is obtained and used for the next:
m X j1

M jgi

m m m X X X lj mj uj j1 j1 j1

! A:10

l8;10 x 1 j x 9 j; 8

10:

A:2

where l is the lower limit value, m is the most promising value and u is the upper limit value. And to obtain Eq. (A.11);

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S. Yousee et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 96339647

" n m XX
i1 j1

#1 M jgi A:11

Perform the fuzzy addition operation of M jgi (j = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, . . ., m) values give as Eq. (A.12):
n m XX i1 j1

Mjgi

n n n X X X lj mj uj i1 i1 i1

! A:12

And then compute the inverse of the vector in Eqs. (A.12) and (A.13) is then obtained such that

" n m XX
i1 j1

#1 M jgi

" 1=

n X i1

ui ; 1=

n X i1

mi ; 1=

n X i1

# li A:13

Step 2: The degree of possibility of M2 = (l2, m2, u2) P M1 = (l1, m1, u1) is dened as Eq. (A.14):

VM 2 ! M 1 supminlM1 x; lM2 y
Y!x

A:14

forms much better than any other companies in terms of organizational needs for excellence Wm, then further improvement may not be urgently needed and thus a lower priority could be assigned to Wm. At the other extreme, if C1 performs much worse than many other companies on Wm, then it may be difcult for C1 to build a competitive advantage within a short period of time. In both cases, Wm could be assigned a lower priority rating. However, if most companies perform quite similarly on Wm, not too much improvement effort from C1 may result in a better performance of its excellence and give C1 a unique competitive advantage. Thus a higher priority could be assigned to Wm. In particular, if all companies performances on Wm are the same, it implies a great excellence opportunity since any improvement would create a signicant competitive advantage. So the highest priority could be assigned to Wm. This basis of assigning priorities is interestingly related to the entropy concept in information theory. Entropy is a measure for the amount of information (or uncertainty, variations) represented by a discrete probability distribution, p1, p2, . . ., pL:

And x and y are the values on the axis of membership function of each criterion. This expression can be equivalently written as given in Eq. (A.15) below:

EW 1 UL

1 X l1

Pml lnPml

A:19

8 >1 < VM2 P M 1 0 > :

if m2 P m1 ; if l2 P u1 ; Otherwise A:15

l1 u2 m2 u2 m1 u1

To compare M1 and M2; we need both the values of V(M2 P M1) and V(M1 P M2): Step 3: The degree possibility for a convex fuzzy number to be greater than k convex fuzzy numbers

where UL = 1/ln(L) is a normalization constant to guarantee 0 6 E(p1, p2, . . ., pL) 6 1. Larger entropy or E(p1, p2, . . ., pL) value implies smaller variations among the pls and hence less information contained in the distribution. For the mth row of the customer comparison matrix X corresponding to the organizational needs for P excellence need W m ; xm1 ; xm2 ; . . . ; xml , let xm xml be the total score with respect to Wm. Then according to (A.19), the normalized ratings pml = xml/xm for l = 1, 2, . . ., L can be viewed as the probability distribution of Wm on the L companies with entropy as

M i i 1; 2; 3; . . . ; k can be defined by VM ! M 1 ; M2 ; . . . ; Mk VM ! M1 &M ! M 2 & &M ! Mk min VM ! M i ; i 1; 2; . . . ; k

Assume that Eq. (A.16) is

EW 1 UL UL

1 X l1 1 X l1

Pml lnPml EW 1 xml lnxml =xm A:20

d Ai min VSi ! Sk

A:16

For k = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, . . ., n; k i. Then the weight vector is given by Eq. (A.17):

W l d A1 ; d A2 ; . . . ; d An T

A:17

where Ai (i = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, . . ., n) are n elements. Step 4: Via normalization, the normalized weight vectors are given in Eq. (A.18):

It is clear that the larger the E(Wm) value, the less information contained in Wm or smaller variations among the pmls (or xmls). If all companies performance ratings on Wm, xm1, xm2, . . ., xmL, are the same, Wm has zero variations and E(Wm) achieves its maximum of 1. So E(Wm) can be used to reect the relative competitive advantage in terms of the organizational needs for excellence Wm. All these E(Wm) values, after normalization:

, em EW m

M X

W l dA1 ; dA2 ; . . . ; dAn T

where W is non-fuzzy numbers. A.3. Entropy method for competitive priority ratings

EW m ; m 1; 2; . . . ; M

A:21

A:18

m1

In our HOE model, step 3 is to obtain and analyze the following excellence comparison matrix:

em can be considered as the excellence competitive priority ratings for company C1 on the M organizational needs for excellence, with a larger em indicating higher competitive priority for the corresponding Wm. For more on entropy and its applications (Chan, Kao, Ng, & Wu, 1999). References
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