Abstract
The material handling equipment (MHE) has a close connection with layout of machinery and plays the important role in productivity of servicing or manufacturing systems. Since each of MHE has distinct characteristics than the others with respect to conflicting criteria and design experts may state the different subjective judgments with respect to qualitative criteria, the material handling equipment selection problem (MHESP) can be taken into account as a group multi-criteria decision-making (GMCDM) problem. In this paper, a version of type-2 fuzzy sets (T2FSs), named Gaussian interval type-2 fuzzy sets (GIT2FSs), is first used as an alternative to the traditional triangular membership functions (MFs) to weight criteria and sub-criteria and also evaluate of alternatives with respect to sub-criteria. The synthetic value method of GIT2FSs is then carried out to convert the assessments stated as GIT2FSs for each alternative with respect to each sub-criterion and also weights of criteria (sub-criteria) into the single fuzzy rating and weight, respectively. Then, the fuzzy weighted average (FWA) approach is adopted to integrate the single fuzzy ratings of each alternative with respect to sub-criteria and the single fuzzy weights of sub-criteria under each criterion with the aggregated weighted ratings. In next stage, ELECTRE III (ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la Realite´—elimination and choice translation reality) is generalized with GIT2FSs to select the optimal MHE through a new ranking approach. Moreover, some arithmetic operations and properties are extended to GIT2FSs. In addition, to demonstrate its potential applications, the proposed methodology is implemented in a real case study and an illustrative example, and then, the ranking results are compared with those of the others in the literature. Finally, the sensitivity analysis is carried out to show robustness and stability of the obtained results.
Highlights
In the today competition world, one of the managers’ important duties for gaining the greater share of product market is to reduce costs
The goal of this paper is to introduce a generalized hybrid group decision-making methodology based on Gaussian interval type-2 fuzzy sets (GIT2FSs) for material handling equipment selection problem (MHESP)
Type-1 fuzzy sets could greatly resolve ambiguities in decision problems, it takes into account only a specified measure for membership functions (MFs)
Summary
In the today competition world, one of the managers’ important duties for gaining the greater share of product market is to reduce costs. After the stages of production and process design when setting up of the manufacturing or servicing system, the design of material handling equipment (MHE) (including the activities of selection, arrangement, and establishment) should be carried out in stage of operation design. The material handling equipment selection problem (MHESP) changes the productivity index, since it depends on the cost of goods manufactured directly. MHE can encompass “30–75% of this cost and the selection of efficient MHE can be responsible for reducing the plant’s operating costs by 15–30%” [1]. Complexity of MHESP has some reasons as follows. These properties are usually categorized into two groups of criteria, namely the quantitative criteria
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