A fuzzy multi-criteria evaluation method for designing fashion oriented industrial products

Abstract

In this paper, we present a fuzzy multi-criteria decision making method for evaluating a set of fashion oriented industrial products in order to design new products meeting specific market requirements. Human perceptions at two levels (basic product perception and complex fashion perception), evaluated by a group of evaluators, have been integrated into the related evaluation procedure. For a specific product, the three first fuzzy evaluation criteria are its conformity degrees related to the specific consumer’s requirement in fashion themes, basic product perception and functional properties. The degree of conformity between the basic product perception and the complex fashion perception, and the price of the product constitute the two remaining evaluation criteria. The previous conformity degrees are formalized according to the measures of dissimilarity between products as well as dissimilarity and inclusion between different fashion themes. The weights of the evaluation criteria are linguistic variables generated from the results of market classification obtained by a parametric identification method. These weights can effectively characterize the relationship between sales volumes of products and their components (price, fashion style, physical features, and basic perception). Finally, the set of all existing products can be evaluated and ranked by aggregating the previous fuzzy evaluation criteria with linguistic weights. The proposed fuzzy multi-criteria evaluation method has been applied to select the most relevant industrial products for different markets. Moreover, as the general aggregated evaluation criterion can be considered as a quality function of design parameters (functional properties, basic and fashion complex perceptions) for a specific market, we can estimate this function by evaluating all existing products in order to design new consumer oriented products.