An integrated decision-making approach for designing and selecting product concepts based on QFD and cumulative prospect theory

In this paper, both unbalanced linguistic terms and a risk decision-making problem with developers’ bounded rationality are considered; an integrated approach of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT) is proposed to help increase customer satisfaction and facilitate product concepts selection. Firstly, QFD is employed to provide a customer-driven tool for developers, which can be used to generate product concept alternatives. Subsequently, enhanced information entropy is utilised to prioritise competing Customer requirements (CRs) based on unbalanced linguistic terms. These terms can be directly processed without being translated into fuzzy numbers, where the risk of information loss in fuzzification can be minimised. Product concept alternatives can be generated based on the outcomes of the subsequent QFD process. Moreover, CPT can be considered as a novel method by incorporating the developers’ psychological characteristics under risk, which can help identify the most relevant product concepts. The cost prospect values of each alternative can be calculated by the function based on the cost reference point. The deficit and profit prospect values can be obtained by aggregating the values and weights of potential results, where functions from the enhanced CPT are used. The order of all alternatives can be ranked based on their overall prospect values. Finally, the proposed approach can be evaluated by a case study concerning the development of a new hydraulic breaker. The deliverables of this study are used to evaluate the relative advantages of the proposed approach over existing multi-attribute utility ones.