An evaluation approach to engineering design in QFD processes using fuzzy goal programming models

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a product development process used to achieve higher customer satisfaction: the engineering characteristics affecting the product performance are designed to match the customer requirements. From the viewpoint of QFDs designers, product design processes are performed in uncertain environments, and usually more than one goal must be taken into account. Therefore, when dealing with the fuzzy nature in QFD processes, fuzzy approaches are applied to formulate the relationships between customer requirements (CRs) and engineering design requirements (DRs), and among DRs. In addition to customer satisfaction, the cost and technical difficulty of DRs are also considered as the other two goals, and are evaluated in linguistic terms. Fuzzy goal programming models are proposed to determine the fulfillment levels of the DRs. Differing from existing fuzzy goal programming models, the coefficients in the proposed model are also fuzzy in order to expose the fuzziness of the linguistic information. Our model also considers business competition by specifying the minimum fulfillment levels of DRs and the preemptive priorities between goals. The proposed approach can attain the maximal sum of satisfaction degrees of all goals under each confidence degree. A numerical example is used to illustrate the applicability of the approach.     

An advanced quality function deployment model using fuzzy analytic network process

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a customer-oriented design tool used to ensure that the voice of customers is employed throughout the product planning and design stages. QFD uses the house of quality (HOQ), which is a matrix that provides a conceptual map for inter-functional planning and communication. In this paper, an advanced QFD model, based on fuzzy analytic network process (ANP) approach, is proposed to systematically take into account the interrelationship between and within the QFD components. The proposed method is aimed at expanding the current research scope from the product planning phase to the part deployment phase to provide product developers with more valuable information (ex. the importance and bottleneck level of part characteristics). Both customer requirements and the company’s production demands will be used as the inputs for the QFD process to enhance the completeness and accuracy of the QFD analysis results. A case study is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed method.     

基于模糊信息公理与云模型的虚拟企业合作伙伴选择

针对虚拟企业建立过程中的关键问题——合作伙伴选择,本文以合作需求为驱动,建立了一种基于模糊信息公理与云模型的合作伙伴选择方法。利用质量功能展开法将合作需求转化为决策属性及其重要度,采用模糊三角数处理展开过程中的不确定信息,并以相对偏好关系计算属性相对重要度。运用信息公理计算各候选企业的信息量,再以各候选企业信息量作为云滴,利用逆向云生成器求得评价结果的云数字特征,通过云数字特征将其转换为定性评价,并进一步分析评价结果。最后,通过实例分析验证了该方法的可行性和有效性。     

Fuzzy linear programming models for new product design using QFD with FMEA

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a customer-driven approach in processing new product developments in order to maximize customer satisfaction. Determining the fulfillment levels of design requirements (DRs) and parts characteristics (PCs) is an important decision problem during QFD activity processes for new product development. Unlike the existing literature, which mainly focuses on the determination of DRs, this paper proposes fuzzy linear programming models to determine the fulfillment levels of PCs under the requirement to achieve the determined contribution levels of DRs for customer satisfaction. In addition, considering the design risk, this paper incorporates failure modes and effect analysis (FMEA) into QFD processes, which is treated as the constraint in the models. To cope with the vague nature of product development processes, fuzzy approaches are used for both FMEA and QFD. The illustration of the proposed models is performed with a numerical example to demonstrate the applicability in practice.     

Extension of the TOPSIS method for decision making problems under interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy environment

TOPSIS is one of the well-known methods for multiple attribute decision making (MADM). In this paper, we extend the TOPSIS method to solve multiple attribute group decision making (MAGDM) problems in interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy environment in which all the preference information provided by the decision-makers is presented as interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrices where each of the elements is characterized by interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy number (IVIFNs), and the information about attribute weights is partially known. First, we use the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy hybrid geometric (IIFHG) operator to aggregate all individual interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrices provided by the decision-makers into the collective interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix, and then we use the score function to calculate the score of each attribute value and construct the score matrix of the collective interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix. From the score matrix and the given attribute weight information, we establish an optimization model to determine the weights of attributes, and construct the weighted collective interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix, and then determine the interval-valued intuitionistic positive-ideal solution and interval-valued intuitionistic negative-ideal solution. Based on different distance definitions, we calculate the relative closeness of each alternative to the interval-valued intuitionistic positive-ideal solution and rank the alternatives according to the relative closeness to the interval-valued intuitionistic positive-ideal solution and select the most desirable one(s). Finally, an example is used to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach.     

Product design and selection using fuzzy QFD and fuzzy MCDM approaches

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a useful analyzing tool in product design and development. To solve the uncertainty or imprecision in QFD, numerous researchers have applied the fuzzy set theory to QFD and developed various fuzzy QFD models. Three issues are investigated by examining their models. First, the extant studies focused on identifying important engineering characteristics and seldom explored the subsequent prototype product selection issue. Secondly, the previous studies usually use fuzzy number algebraic operations to calculate the fuzzy sets in QFD. This approach may cause a great deviation in the result from the correct value. Thirdly, few studies have paid attention to the competitive analysis in QFD. However, it can provide product developers with a large amount of valuable information. Aimed at these three issues, this study integrates fuzzy QFD and the prototype product selection model to develop a product design and selection (PDS) approach. In fuzzy QFD, the α-cut operation is adopted to calculate the fuzzy set of each component. Competitive analysis and the correlations among engineering characteristics are also considered. In prototype product selection, engineering characteristics and the factors involved in product development are considered. A fuzzy multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach is proposed to select the best prototype product. A case study is given to illustrate the research steps for the proposed PDS method. The proposed method provides product developers with more useful information and precise analysis results. Thus, the PDS method can serve as a helpful decision-aid tool in product design.     

Fuzzy linear programming models for NPD using a four-phase QFD activity process based on the means-end chain concept

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a customer-driven approach in processing new product development (NPD) to maximize customer satisfaction. Determining the fulfillment levels of the “hows”, including design requirements (DRs), part characteristics (PCs), process parameters (PPs) and production requirements (PRs), is an important decision problem during the four-phase QFD activity process for new product development. Unlike previous studies, which have only focused on determining DRs, this paper considers the close link between the four phases using the means-end chain (MEC) concept to build up a set of fuzzy linear programming models to determine the contribution levels of each “how” for customer satisfaction. In addition, to tackle the risk problem in NPD processes, this paper incorporates risk analysis, which is treated as the constraint in the models, into the QFD process. To deal with the vague nature of product development processes, fuzzy approaches are used for both QFD and risk analysis. A numerical example is used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model.     

Correlation coefficient of interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets and its application to multiple attribute group decision making problems

In this paper, we investigate the group decision making problems in which all the information provided by the decision-makers is presented as interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrices where each of the elements is characterized by interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy number (IVIFN), and the information about attribute weights is partially known. First, we use the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy hybrid geometric (IIFHG) operator to aggregate all individual interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrices provided by the decision-makers into the collective interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix, and then we use the score function to calculate the score of each attribute value and construct the score matrix of the collective interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix. From the score matrix and the given attribute weight information, we establish an optimization model to determine the weights of attributes, and then we use the obtained attribute weights and the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy weighted geometric (IIFWG) operator to fuse the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy information in the collective interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix to get the overall interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy values of alternatives, and then rank the alternatives according to the correlation coefficients between IVIFNs and select the most desirable one(s). Finally, a numerical example is used to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach.     

Multi-person multi-attribute decision making models under intuitionistic fuzzy environment

Intuitionistic fuzzy numbers, each of which is characterized by the degree of membership and the degree of non-membership of an element, are a very useful means to depict the decision information in the process of decision making. In this article, we investigate the group decision making problems in which all the information provided by the decision makers is expressed as intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrices where each of the elements is characterized by intuitionistic fuzzy number, and the information about attribute weights is partially known, which may be constructed by various forms. We first use the intuitionistic fuzzy hybrid geometric (IFHG) operator to aggregate all individual intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrices provided by the decision makers into the collective intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix, then we utilize the score function to calculate the score of each attribute value and construct the score matrix of the collective intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix. Based on the score matrix and the given attribute weight information, we establish some optimization models to determine the weights of attributes. Furthermore, we utilize the obtained attribute weights and the intuitionistic fuzzy weighted geometric (IFWG) operator to fuse the intuitionistic fuzzy information in the collective intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix to get the overall intuitionistic fuzzy values of alternatives by which the ranking of all the given alternatives can be found. Finally, we give an illustrative example.     

A QFD-based fuzzy MCDM approach for supplier selection

Supplier selection is a highly important multi-criteria group decision making problem, which requires a trade-off between multiple criteria exhibiting vagueness and imprecision with the involvement of a group of experts. In this paper, a fuzzy multi-criteria group decision making approach that makes use of the quality function deployment (QFD) concept is developed for supplier selection process. The proposed methodology initially identifies the features that the purchased product should possess in order to satisfy the company’s needs, and then it seeks to establish the relevant supplier assessment criteria. Moreover, the proposed algorithm enables to consider the impacts of inner dependence among supplier assessment criteria. The upper and the lower bounds of the weights of supplier assessment criteria and ratings of suppliers are computed by using the fuzzy weighted average (FWA) method. The FWA method allows for the fusion of imprecise and subjective information expressed as linguistic variables or fuzzy numbers. The method produces less imprecise and more realistic overall desirability levels, and thus it rectifies the problem of loss of information. A fuzzy number ranking method that is based on area measurement is used to obtain the final ranking of suppliers. The computational procedure of the proposed framework is illustrated through a supplier selection problem reported in an earlier study.     

Aggregating crisp values into intuitionistic fuzzy number for group decision making

This paper presents a multiple attribute group decision making model based on aggregating crisp values into intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. First, each alternative is evaluated with respect to their attributes, whose values are provided by decision maker as crisp numbers. Second, to make a reasonable normalization of attribute values in the group decision making environment, a maximum grade and a minimum grade are added to the attribute values. These normalized attribute values are then aggregated (per attribute) into an induced intuitionistic fuzzy number. Each alternative is then evaluated according to the induced intuitionistic fuzzy number. To show the major technical advances in this paper, comparisons with other methods are also made. Finally, an experimental analysis for supplier selection is given to illustrate the reasonableness and efficiency of the introduced method.     

服务管理目标优化配置的Fuzzy-QFD线性规划模型构建与求解

由于服务管理的复杂性和模糊性,现有方法难以有效解决基于主观语言评价的服务质量改进问题。本文拓展了质量功能展开(QFD)方法在服务业中的应用,通过构建一个模糊线性规划模型,以求解最大化提高顾客需求综合满意度的企业能力优化配置问题。首先基于顾客感知-期望差距的模糊评估确定顾客需求、需求权重和边界约束等模型参数,接着运用模糊线性回归和非对称三角模糊数的隶属函数,将含有模糊变量的模糊线性规划问题转化为经典线性规划问题,进而求得不同模糊条件下的模型解。最后通过网购平台的实例验证了模型的有效性和可行性。     

A new fuzzy multiple attributive group decision making methodology and its application to propulsion/manoeuvring system selection problem

In this paper, a new fuzzy multiple attribute decision-making (FMADM) method, which is suitable for multiple attributive group decision making (GDM) problems in fuzzy environment, is proposed to deal with the problem of ranking and selection of alternatives. Since the subjectivity, imprecision and vagueness in the estimates of a performance rating enter into multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) problems, fuzzy set theory provides a mathematical framework for modelling vagueness and imprecision. In the proposed approach, an attribute based aggregation technique for heterogeneous group of experts is employed and used for dealing with fuzzy opinion aggregation for the subjective attributes of the decision problem. The propulsion/manoeuvring system selection as a real case study is used to demonstrate the versatility and potential of the proposed method for solving fuzzy multiple attributive group decision-making problems. The proposed method is a generalised model, which can be applied to great variety of practical problems encountered in the naval architecture from propulsion/manoeuvring system selection to warship requirements definition.     

Extension of the VIKOR method for group decision making with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy information

The aim of this paper is to extend the VIKOR method for multiple attribute group decision making in interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy environment, in which all the preference information provided by the decision-makers is presented as interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrices where each of the elements is characterized by interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy number, and the information about attribute weights is partially known, which is an important research field in decision science and operation research. First, we use the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy hybrid geometric operator to aggregate all individual interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrices provided by the decision-makers into the collective interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix, and then we use the score function to calculate the score of each attribute value and construct the score matrix of the collective interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix. From the score matrix and the given attribute weight information, we establish an optimization model to determine the weights of attributes, and then determine the interval-valued intuitionistic positive-ideal solution and interval-valued intuitionistic negative-ideal solution. We use the different distances to calculate the particular measure of closeness of each alternative to the interval-valued intuitionistic positive-ideal solution. According to values of the particular measure, we rank the alternatives and then select the most desirable one(s). Finally, a numerical example is used to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach.     

Interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy combined weighted averaging operator for group decision making

Determining the attribute weights, in the multiple attribute group decision-making analysis with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy information, plays a crucial role because of its direct effect on the optimal alternative. In this paper, we develop a new attribute weight based on the support and entropy measure of attribute values. Then, the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy combined weighted averaging (IVIFCWA) operator is proposed and its some primary properties are discussed. The IVIFCWA operator’s attribute values take the form of interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers and the principal component of the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy number is fully taken into account. Finally, a numerical example concerning the investment strategy is given to illustrate the validity and applicability of the proposed method.     

考虑可信度和优先级的对偶犹豫模糊多属性决策在绿色审计中的应用研究

针对目前专家和属性对于方案比选的重要性致使企业迫切需要将其定量化分析的问题,以及企业环境行为中公司需要承担环保责任,在绿色采购方面要将环境属性引入供应商比选标准的问题,本文提出了考虑专家可信度和属性优先级的对偶犹豫模糊多属性决策方法,将专家对于该领域的熟悉程度及所选属性的重要程度融入到供应商的绿色评估指标定量化分析与评选中。结合对偶犹豫模糊集的隶属度与非隶属度,给出了对偶犹豫模糊熵值、混合平均算子和混合几何算子的计算模型与该方法模型的具体步骤,通过对某企业绿色审计在内的四种属性进行评估来选择最佳供应商的实例,验证了此模型的可行性和有效性。     

The interval-valued fuzzy TOPSIS method and experimental analysis

The purpose of this paper is to extend the TOPSIS method based on interval-valued fuzzy sets in decision analysis. Hwang and Yoon developed the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) in 1981. TOPSIS has been widely used to rank the preference order of alternatives and determine the optimal choice. Considering the fact that it is difficult to precisely attach the numerical measures to the relative importance of the attributes and to the impacts of the alternatives on these attributes in some cases, therefore, the TOPSIS method has been extended for interval-valued fuzzy data in this paper. In addition, a comprehensive experimental analysis to observe the interval-valued fuzzy TOPSIS results yielded by different distance measures is presented. A comparative analysis of interval-valued fuzzy TOPSIS rankings from each distance measure is illustrated with discussions on consistency rates, contradiction rates, and average Spearman correlation coefficients. Finally, a second-order regression model is provided to highlight the effects of the number of alternatives, the number of attributes, and distance measures on average Spearmen correlation coefficients.     

图犹豫模糊Power Heronian平均算子及其在多属性决策中应用

针对需要同时考虑属性关联性及整体均衡性多属性决策问题,联合图犹豫模糊集对于不确定信息的表达优势,提出一种基于图犹豫模糊Power Heronian平均算子的多属性决策方法。首先,给出图犹豫模糊数的得分函数、精确函数及距离公式;在此基础上,提出图犹豫模糊Power Heronian平均算子和图犹豫模糊Power加权Heronian平均算子;最后,将所提算子应用于多属性决策问题中,验证所提算子的有效性和可行性。     

直觉模糊多属性的意见集中排序法

研究了属性权重信息不完全确定,属性值为直觉模糊集的多属性决策问题。首先根据直觉模糊数的得分函数和精确函数对决策矩阵中的评价值比较大小,进而按属性集中的每个属性对方案排成线性序;然后通过计算赋权模糊优先矩阵确定方案的优属度,建立规划模型确定属性的权重;再利用加权算术算子对方案集结,得到专家对方案的排序,从而得到一种新的意见集中排序的决策方法。数值实例说明该方法的有效性和实用性,可为解决直觉模糊多属性决策提供新方法     

Capturing and prioritizing students’ requirements for course design by embedding Fuzzy-AHP and linear programming in QFD

Customer requirements play a vital and important role in the design of products and services. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a popular, widely used method that helps translate customer requirements into design specifications. Thus, the foundation for a successful QFD implementation lies in the accurate capturing and prioritization of these requirements. This paper proposes and tests the use of an alternative framework for prioritizing students’ requirements within QFD. More specifically, Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy-AHP) and the linear programming method (LP-GW-AHP) based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) are embedded into QFD (QFD-LP-GW-Fuzzy AHP) in order to account for inherent subjectivity of human judgements. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is assessed in capturing and prioritizing students’ requirements regarding courses’ learning outcomes within the process of an academic course design. Sensitivity analysis evaluates the robustness of the prioritization solution and implications for course design specifications are discussed.