Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Model for Supplier Evaluation and Selection in a Wind Power Plant Project

Abstract

In order to meet ambitious growth targets in the medium term, Vietnam must continue exploiting traditional energy sources. In the longer term, Vietnam has to develop a strategy and roadmap for the development of new energy sources. In these new energy sources, wind energy has emerged as a viable option. Given the geographic conditions of a locality with a long coastline and high winds that are fairly distributed all year, many wind-power plants are being built in Vietnam. One of the most important pieces of equipment in a wind-power plant is the wind turbine. The wind turbine suppliers’ selection is a complex and multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) process that can reduce the costs of procuring equipment and aid in receiving products on time. Many studies have applied the MCDM model to various fields of science and engineering. One of the fields that the MCDM approaches have been applied to is the supplier selection problem. Supplier selection is an important issue of the MCDM model. Especially in a renewable energy project, decision-makers have to evaluate both natural and society factors. Although some researchers have reviewed the applications of the MCDM model in wind turbine supplier selection, limited work has focused on this problem in a fuzzy environment. Therefore, in this work, the authors propose a fuzzy MCDM model for the wind turbine supplier selection process under fuzzy environment conditions. In the first step, all factors for wind turbine supplier selection are identified by supply chain operations reference (SCOR) metrics and the results from a review of the literature. A fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) model is applied for determining the weight of all the criteria in the second stage, and the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) model is used to rank all the potential suppliers in the final stage. As a result, Decision-Making Unit 010 (DMU010) becomes an optimal option for the wind turbine supplier selection processes. The contribution of this research is to develop new hybrid fuzzy MCDM approaches for wind turbine supplier selections. Furthermore, this work presents useful guidelines for wind turbines as well as provides a guideline for supplier selection in other industries.