Abstract
Quality function deployment (QFD) is a customer-oriented product/service design tool with diversified team members reaching a consensus in developing a new or an improved product/service to maximize customer satisfaction. Determining the relative importance ratings (RIRs) of customer requirements (CRs) is actually a multiple attribute decision making (MADM) problem, which is regarded as an essential step in QFD application. Although many decision making approaches have been developed to rate the CRs, few of them refer to derive the weights of evaluators, and there is paucity of literature which combines the probabilistic linguistic term sets (PLTSs) with QFD methodology. Therefore, PLTSs are introduced in our study, to simultaneously reflect the hesitancy and preference degrees of evaluators. A novel MADM technique based on probabilistic linguistic preference (PLP) is explored to calculate the RIRs among CRs under the PLP environment. Concretely, some operators, such as the normalization formulas, the probabilistic linguistic expected value (PLEV) operator as well as the standard formula, are applied to weight the decision makers; a modified grey relational analysis-technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (GRA-TOPSIS) method called probabilistic linguistic-based GRA-TOPSIS is also proposed to rate the relative importance over CRs. Finally, application of product improvement of a turbine engine is given to see the validity and feasibility of the proposed approach.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bodily, S. E. (1979). A delegation process for combining individual utility functions. Management Science, 25(10), 1035–1041.
Gu, H., & Song, B. F. (2009). Study on effectiveness evaluation of weapon systems based on grey relational analysis and TOPSIS. Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics, 20(1), 106–111.
Herrera, F., Herrera-Viedma, E., & Martínez, L. (2000). A fusion approach for managing multi-granularity linguistic term sets in decision making. Fuzzy Sets and Systems, 114(1), 43–58.
Ho, W., He, T., Lee, C. K. M., & Emrouznejad, A. (2012). Strategic logistics outsourcing: An integrated QFD and fuzzy AHP approach. Expert Systems with Applications, 39(12), 10841–10850.
Li, N. N., & Zhao, H. R. (2016). Performance evaluation of eco-industrial thermal power plants by using fuzzy GRA-VIKOR and combination weighting techniques. Journal of Cleaner Production, 135, 169–183.
Li, Y. L., Du, Y. F., & Chin, K. S. (2018). Determining the importance ratings of customer requirements in quality function deployment based on interval linguistic information. International Journal of Production Research, 56(14), 4692–4708.
Liao, H. C., Mi, X. M., & Xu, Z. S. (2019). A survey of decision-making methods with probabilistic linguistic information: Bibliometrics, preliminaries, methodologies, applications and future directions. Fuzzy Optimization and Decision Making, 19, 81–134.
Nepal, B., Yadav, O. P., & Murat, A. (2010). A fuzzy-AHP approach to prioritization of CS attributes in target planning for automotive product development. Expert Systems with Applications, 37(10), 6775–6786.
Pang, Q., Wang, H., & Xu, Z. S. (2016). Probabilistic linguistic term sets in multi-attribute group decision making. Information Sciences, 369, 128–143.
Parameshwaran, R., Baskar, C., & Karthik, T. (2015). An integrated framework for mechatronics based product development in a fuzzy environment. Applied Soft Computing, 27, 376–390.
Peng, J. G., Xia, G., Sun, B. Q., & Wang, S. J. (2018). Systematical decision-making approach for quality function deployment based on uncertain linguistic term sets. International Journal of Production Research, 56(18), 6183–6200.
Rodriguez, R. M., Martinez, L., & Herrera, F. (2013). A group decision making model dealing with comparative linguistic expressions based on hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets. Information Sciences, 241, 28–42.
Tsaur, R. C. (2015). Green product pricing decision analysis with application to personal computers. International Journal of Production Research, 53(1), 307–320.
Wang, Z. Q., Fung, R. Y. K., Li, Y. L., & Pu, Y. (2016). A group multi-granularity linguistic-based methodology for prioritizing engineering characteristics under uncertainties. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 91, 178–187.
Wu, S. M., Liu, H. C., & Wang, L. E. (2017). Hesitant fuzzy integrated MCDM approach for quality function deployment: A case study in electric vehicle. International Journal of Production Research, 55(15), 4436–4449.
Wu, X. L., & Liao, H. C. (2018). An approach to quality function deployment based on probabilistic linguistic term sets and ORESTE method for multi-expert multi-criteria decision making. Information Fusion, 43, 13–26.
Xie, W. Y., Xu, Z. S., Ren, Z. L., & Wang, H. (2018). Probabilistic linguistic analytic hierarchy process and its application on the performance assessment of Xiongan new area. International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making, 17(6), 1693–1724.
Xu, Z. S. (2004). A method based on linguistic aggregation operators for group decision making with linguistic preference relations. Information Sciences, 166(1–4), 19–30.
Xu, Z. S. (2006). A note on linguistic hybrid arithmetic averaging operator in multiple attribute group decision making with linguistic information. Group Decision and Negotiation, 15(6), 593–604.
Xu, Z. S. (2009). An interactive approach to multiple attribute group decision making with multigranular uncertain linguistic information. Group Decision and Negotiation, 18(2), 119–145.
Yang, W. G., & Wu, Y. J. (2019). A novel TOPSIS method based on improved grey relational analysis for multiattribute decision-making problem. Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 2019, 1–10.
Zaim, S., Sevkli, M., Camgöz-Akdaǧ, H., Demirel, O. F., & Yayla, A. Y. (2014). Use of ANP weighted crisp and fuzzy QFD for product development. Expert Systems with Applications, 41(9), 4464–4474.
Zhang, X. L. (2018). A novel probabilistic linguistic approach for large-scale group decision making with incomplete weight information. International Journal of Fuzzy Systems, 20(7), 2245–2256.
Zhao, H., Xu, Z. S., Wang, H., & Liu, S. S. (2017). Hesitant fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making based on the minimum deviation method. Soft Computing, 21(12), 3439–3459.
Zhu, B., & Xu, Z. S. (2014). Consistency measures for hesitant fuzzy linguistic preference relations. IEEE Transaction Fuzzy Systems, 22(1), 35–45.
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61876157, 71571148), and the Yanghua Scholar Plan (Part A) of SWJTU.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Du, Y., Liu, D. A novel approach to relative importance ratings of customer requirements in QFD based on probabilistic linguistic preferences. Fuzzy Optim Decis Making 20, 365–395 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10700-020-09347-4
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10700-020-09347-4