Picture fuzzy set and quality function deployment approach based novel framework for multi-criteria group decision making method

Abstract

Quality function deployment (QFD) translates customers’ requirements into product design requirements for improving quality and design of the product. Very often, customers’ requirements are uncertain because of imprecision and linguistic representation. Many researchers have integrated fuzzy set (FS) and intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) with QFD to model uncertainty in the preferences of customers’ requirements due to imprecision and vagueness. Since picture fuzzy set (PFS) which is an extension of IFS, has been proved more ideal than fuzzy and intuitionistic fuzzy set in modeling of fuzziness and uncertainty in real life problem of decision making, we have integrated QFD with PFS to propose a multi-criteria group decision making (MCGDM) method. Present study contributes a MCGDM method that uses prominent characteristic of QFD in the integration of heterogeneous preferences of decision makers by splitting them into groups of users and analysts. Positive, negative and no correlations among engineering criteria without normalization in QFD is used in proposed MCGDM method to obtain more precise overall relationship matrix and hence final ranking of alternatives. Feasibility and suitability of proposed MCGDM method is verified by using it on a real case study of ranking of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter in which users are taken as decision makers.