Informatica

Present worth (PW) analysis is an important technique in engineering economics for investment analysis. The values of PW analysis parameters such as interest rate, first cost, salvage value and annual cash flow are generally estimated including some degree of uncertainty. In order to capture the vagueness in these parameters, fuzzy sets are often used in the literature. In this study, we introduce interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy PW analysis and circular intuitionistic fuzzy PW analysis in order to handle the impreciseness in the estimation of PW analysis parameters. Circular intuitionistic fuzzy sets are the latest extension of intuitionistic fuzzy sets defining the uncertainty of membership and non-membership degrees through a circle whose radius is r. Thus, we develop new fuzzy extensions of PW analysis including the uncertainty of membership functions. The methods are given step by step and an application for water treatment device purchasing at a local municipality is illustrated in order to show their applicability. In addition, a multi-parameter sensitivity analysis is given. Finally, discussions and suggestions for future research are given in conclusion section.

In Quality function deployment (QFD) approach, customers tend to express their needs in linguistic terms rather than exact numerical values and these needs generally contain vague and imprecise information. To overcome this challenge and to use the method more effectively for complex customer-oriented design problems, this paper introduces a novel intuitionistic Z-fuzzy QFD method based on Chebyshev’s inequality (CI) and applies it for a new product design. CI provides the assignment of a more objective reliability function. The reliability value is based on the maximum probability obtained from CI. Then, the expected values of lower and upper bounds of interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy (IVIF) numbers are determined. A competitive analysis among our firm and competitor firms and an integrative analysis for the different functions of QFD is presented. The proposed Z-fuzzy QFD method is applied to the design and development of a hand sanitizer for struggling with COVID-19.

There exist various types of similarity measures for intuitionistic fuzzy sets in the literature. However, in many studies the interactions among the elements are ignored in the construction of the similarity measure. This paper presents a cosine similarity measure for intuitionistic fuzzy sets by using a Choquet integral model in which the interactions between elements are considered. The proposed similarity measure is applied to some pattern recognition problems and the results are compared with some existing results to demonstrate the effectiveness of this new similarity measure.

In this paper, we presented another form of eight similarity measures between PFSs based on the cosine function between PFSs by considering the degree of positive membership, degree of neutral membership, degree of negative membership and degree of refusal membership in PFSs. Then, we applied these weighted cosine function similarity measures between PFSs to strategic decision making. Finally, an illustrative example for selecting the optimal production strategy is given to demonstrate the efficiency of the similarity measures for strategic decision making problem.

This paper reviews the existing definitions and formulas of entropy for interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IVIFSs) and demonstrates that they cannot fully capture the uncertainty of IVIFSs. Then considering both fuzziness and intuitionism of IVIFSs, we introduce a novel axiomatic definition of entropy for IVIFSs and develop several entropy formulas. Example analyses show that the developed entropy formulas can fully reflect both fuzziness and intuitionism of IVIFSs. Furthermore, based on the entropy formulas of IVIFSs, a method is proposed to solve multi-attribute decision making problems with IVIFSs. Additionally, an investment alternative selection example is provided to validate the practicality and effectiveness of the method.