A rough set based fuzzy axiomatic design approach in evaluating customer-centric design alternatives

Nowadays, companies strive to provide products that meet individual customer needs and expectations to achieve high profits. Customers´ perceptions play a significant role in the design process. However, they are normally expressed using linguistic words which are hard to interpret, especially when trying to evaluate the best design solution among multiple design alternatives. This paper proposes a rough set based fuzzy axiomatic design (AD) approach to guide the design decision-making process which contains imprecise information. It aims to overcome the subjectivity of fuzzy membership functions selection by using rough method instead, to deal with vagueness. The approach utilizes the information axiom of AD principles and extends it to support customer-centric multi-attribute decision making. A comparative case study on bicycle frameset is conducted to validate the approach. The result shows that it has advantages compared to the fuzzy approach in processing linguistic assessments and is better suited for customized product design decision support.