To overcome some inherent drawbacks regarding the assessment of relationships between customer requirements and engineering characteristics

the determination of customer requirements weights and the prioritization of engineering characteristics in application of traditional QFD method

a novel QFD method considering expert’s psychological behavior character under probabilistic linguistic environment was proposed. Firstly

the initial weights of customer requirements were determined by using the probabilistic linguistic multiplicative analytic hierarchy process (PL-MAHP). With respect to the interrelationships among customer requirements into account

fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) was used to analyze and determine their final weights. Secondly

the probabilistic linguistic sets (PLTS) was applied to express the uncertainty and hesitancy of subjective assessments in evaluating the interrelations between customer requirements and engineering characteristics. in addition

the TODIM method was extended to probabilistic linguistic environment

the overall dominance of engineering characteristics was utilized to determine the importance ranking of engineering characteristics considering the psychological behaviors of decision makers. Finally

the proposed QFD method was applied in an empirical case concerning the product development of electric vehicle

the results proved that the method can effectively prioritise engineering characteristics in QFD

and comparison study with other relevant methods was also performed to show its merits.