Fuzzy cognitive map based quality function deployment approach for dishwasher machine selection

The traditional quality function deployment (QFD) approach deals with the weights of customer requirements (CRs), relationships among CRs and design requirements (DRs), correlation among DRs by using crisp values. This paper uses fuzzy numbers to improve the drawbacks of the traditional QFD method because fuzzy numbers enable to make consistent decisions in uncertain environment to decision makers. The existing papers handle a simple multiplication operation to calculate the correlation among CRs and the correlation among DRs. This study proposes fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) approach to calculate these correlations so that FCM is a successful method to handle the interactions among criteria. This paper contributes to the literature by integrating QFD approach and fuzzy cognitive map approach. The weights of DRs are defined in the result of the proposed QFD approach. These weights are used to evaluate the dishwasher machine alternatives in intuitionistic fuzzy VIKOR method. Intuitionistic fuzzy number (IFS) ensures to handle more information than type-1 fuzzy number to describe the fuzziness and the uncertainty of the real life world. Finally, the proposed approach has been implemented to a dishwasher machine selection in order to test its validity. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.