Abstract: Sensitivity analysis is a method of product platform planning considering the influence of design parameters on performance. However, the current sensitivity analysis method is difficult to apply to products where there is no clear mathematical function between the performance parameters and design parameters. In view of this deficiency, a sensitivity analysis method based on virtual orthogonal test is proposed, and the product platform planning is carried out in combination with improved QFD. Firstly, the virtual test scheme is determined based on the orthogonal experiment design method. Secondly, a virtual test environment is built by built-in software, in which the design parameters is set of different values and the performance parameters’ change is recorded in real-time. And the sensitivity of the design parameters is calculated based on the ratio of the two parameters. Then the sensitivity matrix is constructed and used to replace the traditional correlation matrix in the QFD house to measure the degree of correlation between the design parameters and the performance parameters so as to reduce the subjectivity of the traditional QFD method. Finally, the improved QFD method is used to identify the product platform parameters, and the effectiveness of the method is verified.

Key words: product platform planning, virtual orthogonal test, improved QFD, sensitivity analysis