An Evidential Axiomatic Design Approach for Decision Making Using the Evaluation of Belief Structure Satisfaction to Uncertain Target Values

Axiomatic design (AD) provides a general theory for system and product development. In recent years, the principles of AD have been successfully applied to the decision-making field, and derived a fuzzy AD approach for fuzzy decision-making environment. In this work, the interest is paid on the theoretical developments and applications of AD in the uncertain environment expressed by Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. Based on the concept of belief structure satisfaction to uncertain target values, an evidential AD approach is proposed for decision making by combining the independence axiom and information axiom of AD with the framework of Dempster-Shafer theory. An illustrative example has demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach. This work, on the one hand, has successfully generalized the principles of AD to the Dempster-Shafer uncertain environment; on the other hand, it has presented a successful application of the concept of belief structure satisfaction. (C) 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.