Abstract
The cloud model (CM) is an important tool to describe qualitative concept by the quantitative method, and the Maclaurin symmetric mean (MSM) can capture the interrelationship among the multi-inputs and it can generalize most of existing operators. In this paper, we firstly convert the uncertain linguistic variables (ULVs), which are easily used to express the qualitative information, to CM. Then, we combine the MSM with the CM, and propose the cloud MSM (CMSM) operator and cloud weighted MSM (CWMSM) operator. In addition, we explore some of their desirable features and develop a new approach to deal with some multi-attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) problems under the uncertain environment based on the proposed operators. Finally, by comparing with other approaches, an illustrative example is arranged to demonstrate the usability of the proposed method.