A new CoCoSo ranking-based QFD approach in Pythagorean fuzzy environment and its application on evaluating design attributes of mobile medical App

Abstract

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a customer-driven product development technique that converts customer requirements (CRs) into design attributes (DAs) of a product and service. Nevertheless, in real situations, the traditional QFD method has been found that possesses some deficiencies, such as the accuracy assessment of relationships between CRs and DAs, and the inter-relationships among DAs. To fill in the above gaps, this study develops a new QFD approach by a CoCoSo-based ranking method under Pythagorean fuzzy environment. To begin with, an extended Pythagorean fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method is proposed to identify the relationships within DAs. Second, the aggregation method of the weighted average method and objective penalty function are propounded to construct the programming models for calculating the importance of DAs under Pythagorean fuzzy setting. Third, a new CoCoSo-based ranking method for Pythagorean triangular fuzzy numbers (PTrFNs) is proposed to obtain the ranking of DAs. Lastly, a case regarding “Ping An Health” mobile medical App is carried out to verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed QFD approach. The results show that the top DA is perceptibility. Therefore, perceptibility should be focus on firstly in the “Ping An Health” App design, such as system fluency, interface comfort and network stability. Additionally, the results show that the new QFD can express experts’ hesitant assessment information, deal with the interrelations among DAs, and yield more precise rankings of DAs in QFD.