An Evolving Partial Consensus Fuzzy Collaborative Forecasting Approach

Abstract

Current fuzzy collaborative forecasting methods have rarely considered how to determine the appropriate number of experts to optimize forecasting performance. Therefore, this study proposes an evolving partial-consensus fuzzy collaborative forecasting approach to address this issue. In the proposed approach, experts apply various fuzzy forecasting methods to forecast the same target, and the partial consensus fuzzy intersection operator, rather than the prevalent fuzzy intersection operator, is applied to aggregate the fuzzy forecasts by experts. Meaningful information can be determined by observing partial consensus fuzzy intersection changes as the number of experts varies, including the appropriate number of experts. We applied the evolving partial-consensus fuzzy collaborative forecasting approach to forecasting dynamic random access memory product yield with real data. The proposed approach forecasting performance surpassed current fuzzy collaborative forecasting that considered overall consensus, and it increased forecasting accuracy 13% in terms of mean absolute percentage error.