Sustainable Circular Supplier Selection in the Power Battery Industry Using a Linguistic T-Spherical Fuzzy MAGDM Model Based on the Improved ARAS Method

Abstract

In the power battery industry, the selection of an appropriate sustainable recycling supplier (SCS) is a significant topic in circular supply chain management. Evaluating and selecting a SCS for spent power batteries is considered a complex multi-attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) problem closely related to the environment, economy, and society. The linguistic T-spherical fuzzy (Lt-SF) set (Lt-SFS) is a combination of a linguistic term set and a T-spherical fuzzy set (T-SFS), which can accurately describe vague cognition of human and uncertain environments. Therefore, this article proposes a group decision-making methodology for a SCS selection based on the improved additive ratio assessment (ARAS) in the Lt-SFS context. This paper extends the Lt-SF generalized distance measure and defines the Lt-SF similarity measure. The Lt-SF Heronian mean (Lt-SFHM) operator and its weighted form (i.e., Lt-SFWHM) were developed. Subsequently, a new Lt-SF MAGDM model was constructed by integrating the LT-SFWHM operator, generalized distance measure, and ARAS method. In it, the expert weight on the attribute was determined based on the similarity measure, using the generalized distance measure to obtain the objective attribute weight and then the combined attribute weight. Finally, a real case of SCS selection in the power battery industry is presented for demonstration. The effectiveness and practicability of this method were verified through a sensitivity analysis and a comparative study with the existing methods.