A Systematic Decision-Making Approach for Quality Function Deployment Based on Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic Term Sets

As a powerful tool for improving customer satisfaction, quality function deployment (QFD) can convert customer requirements (CRs) into engineering characteristics (ECs) during product development and design. Aiming to address the deficiencies of traditional QFD in expert evaluation, CRs’ weight determination and ECs’ importance ranking, this paper proposes an enhanced QFD model that integrates hesitant fuzzy binary semantic variables, the Best–Worst Method (BWM), and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The objective is to determine the prioritization of product engineering characteristics. Indeed, hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTS) have found extensive application in decision-making problems. Compared to other fuzzy language methods, HFLTS offers greater convenience and flexibility in addressing decision-makers’ hesitations and uncertainties. Initially, the combination of hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets with interval binary tuple language variables is employed to articulate the uncertainty in the assessment information provided by QFD team members. Subsequently, the improved BWM and TOPSIS methods based on HFLTS are used to improve the accuracy of the importance ranking of engineering characteristics by determining the weights of CRs and prioritizing ECs in two stages. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method are validated through an illustrative example.