An integrated approach to evaluate module partition schemes of complex products and systems based on interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets

Abstract

Modularisation strategy can effectively shorten the lead time and reduce the cost of complex products and systems (CoPS) development. A few schemes are usually obtained through module partition because of the multidimensional complexity of CoPS. Unfortunately, research has rarely been conducted on the module partition schemes evaluation (MPSE) that is a complicated multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) problem under fuzzy and uncertain environment. The interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set (IVIFS) theory has distinct advantage on dealing with the imprecise and uncertain information in decision-making. In this article, an integrated MPSE approach is developed based on IVIFS. First, the evaluation measures are provided in the form of interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers (IVIFNs). Then the aggregation operators of IVIFSs utilised to construct the fuzzy synthetic decision matrix (FSDM) are obtained based on Karnik–Mendel algorithms. Finally, the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy (IVIF) cross-entropy integrated with the TOPSIS framework is developed to rank the candidate alternatives. The MPSE methods have been used to the design of a large tonnage crawler crane to illustrate that proposed approach is effective and systematic to solve the MPSE problem of CoPS.