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The assessment of design concepts presents an efficient and effective strategy for businesses to strengthen their competitive edge and introduce market-worthy products. The widely accepted viewpoint acknowledges this as a intricate multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach, involving a multitude of evaluative criteria and a significant amount of data that is frequently ambiguously defined and subjectively influenced. In order to tackle the problems of uncertainty and fuzziness in design concept evaluation, our research creatively combines interval-valued picture fuzzy set (IVPFS) with an MCDM process of design concept evaluation. Firstly, this study draws on the existing relevant literature and the experience of decision makers to identify some important criteria and corresponding sub-criteria and form a scientific evaluation indicator system. We then introduce the essential operational concepts of interval-valued picture fuzzy numbers (IVPFNs) and the interval-valued picture fuzzy ordered weighted interactive averaging (IVPFOWIA) operator. Thirdly, an entropy weighting method based on IVPFS is proposed in this research to calculate the weights of criteria and sub-criteria, and based on this, an integrated IVPF decision matrix is further constructed based on the presented IVPFOWIA operator. Finally, the best design concept alternative is selected by applying the extended TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) approach with IVPFS. The IVPFS combined with improved MCDM method have been proven to be superior in complex and uncertain decision-making situations through experiments and comparative assessments. The information ambiguity in the evaluation of design concept is well characterized by our augmentation based on IVPFS., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Ma et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Design concept evaluation plays an important role in product development. However, the complexity and ambiguity of the raw information usually make the assessment imprecise and uncertain. This paper creatively integrates the picture fuzzy set (PFS) into the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) process to solve the problem of the evaluation process. Initially, appropriate criteria and sub-criteria are selected from five aspects by consulting current literature and experts. At the same time, the picture fuzzy numbers (PFNs) and the essential operational ideas of the picture fuzzy weighted interaction average (PFWIA) operator are introduced in this study. Then, we employ the entropy of PFS, and the weights of each criterion and the local weights of each sub-criterion are determined. To select the optimal design alternative, we use the absolute positive and negative ideal solution improved technique for order performance by similarity to the ideal solution method (TOPSIS) and the weighted Mahalanobis distance improved grey relational projection (GRP) approach. Finally, a numerical application is given to demonstrate that the proposed method can help solve the product concept design problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to help the designers to make decisions in the early stage of new product development. Design concept evaluation is very critical in design process, it may affect the later stages. However, facing to uncertain circumstance, mostly, the raw data in early stage are subjective and imprecise. This work proposes a novel approach to solve this problem. The whole work is based on rough numbers, Shannon entropy, technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution method and preference selection index method. Firstly, rough numbers and Shannon entropy are integrated to determine the weight of evaluation criteria based on their interrelationships. After that, a novel technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution method improved by rough numbers and preference selection index method is proposed to evaluate and rank the alternatives. Then, a comparative case is carried out with proposed method and two other methods in this study. The comparation of evaluation processes indicates that the proposed method's advantage. Compared the other methods, proposed approach is objective, simple and do not need additional input. The results of three methods are similar. It means that the proposed method is not only effective and efficient in design concept evaluation, but also can save time and cost in the early stage of new product development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]