Mathematical analysis of fuel cell strategic technologies development solutions in the automotive industry by the TOPSIS multi-criteria decision making method

The mathematical techniques of decision making are among the most valuable outcomes of this research activity, which is generally referred to as realization in the operations, operational research or quantitative methods of decision making. Over time, with the increase in the complexity and the variety of decision making problems, the methods of decision making become more varied and will have more capability of problem solving. Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is a collection of methodologies to compare, select, or rank multiple alternatives that involve incommensurate attributes. Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method is a multiple criteria method to identify solution from finite set of points. Due to the increase in environmental problems, including various forms of air contamination and to the decrease of fossil sources of energy in the world, there is an increasingly pressing need for a clean method of generating energy. In this paper, we seek to review the guidelines resulting in the strategic technologies of fuel cells as converters in the automotive industry and consider the capabilities and attractions of strategic technology and try to find the development solutions of fuel cell strategic technologies by technical economical appropriate fields of attention and investment. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to rank the attractiveness and importance of the stack of fuel cells as a sub-system, as well as determine the amount of knowledge, specialized manpower and equipment needed in two industrial and laboratory scales and from among multi-criteria decision making methods, TOPSIS approach has been dealt with. In order to selecting required information in the evaluation stages of method by asking professional experts views, questionnaire method for data gathering was chosen. The results of this paper include ranked essential solutions for the development of technologies for fuel cells as the power systems for vehicles for allocating attention and investment in the sub-system of stacks of fuel cells by using the multi-criteria decision making selected method (TOPSIS). Copyright (C) 2010, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.