Quality Function Deployment, Value Engineering and Target Costing, an Integrated Framework in Design Cost Management: A Mathematical Programming Approach

In this paper, the need to incorporate three famous design cost management methods, called: quality function deployment (qfd), value engineering (ve) and target costing (tc) into a single model has been addressed. each method performs very well in cost management procedures as design activities. these methods have been incorporated into a mathematical programming model, in order to achieve the maximum benefit of each method. the model, essentially, optimizes customer satisfaction subject to target cost. the tool is a mixed integer zero-one nonlinear programming. the unified model has been proposed to prevent a non-optimal solution when methods interact with each other. the practitioner should be confident that the quality solution would be achieved in contrast to when the methods are applied sequentially. a simple automobile design example was formulated and solved to show the performance of the model.