A novel collaborative decision-making method based on generalized abductive learning for resolving design conflicts

In complex product design, lots of time and resources are consumed to choose a preference-based compromise decision from non-inferior preliminary design models with multi-objective conflicts. However, since complex products involve intensive multi-domain knowledge, preference is not only a comprehensive representation of objective data and subjective knowledge but also characterized by fuzzy and uncertain. In recent years, enormous challenges are involved in the design process, within the increasing complexity of preference. This article mainly proposes a novel decision-making method based on generalized abductive learning (G-ABL) to achieve autonomous and efficient decision-making driven by data and knowledge collaboratively. The proposed G-ABL framework, containing three cores: classifier, abductive kernel, and abductive machine, supports preference integration from data and fuzzy knowledge. In particular, a subtle improvement is presented for WK-means based on the entropy weight method (EWM) to address the local static weight problem caused by the fixed data preferences as the decision set is locally invariant. Furthermore, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE) and Pearson correlation are adopted to quantify domain knowledge and obtain abducted labels. Multi-objective weighted calculations are utilized only to label and compare solutions in the final decision set. Finally, an engineering application is provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, and the superiority of which is illustrated by comparative analysis.