Survey on fuzzy TOPSIS state-of-the-art between 2007 and 2017

A crucial topic in expert system and operations research is fuzzy multi-criteria decision making (FMCDM), which is used in different fields. Existing options and gaps in this topic must be understood to prepare valuable knowledge on FMCDM environments and assist scholars. This study maps the research landscape to provide a clear taxonomy. The authors focus on searching for articles related to (i) technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS); (ii) development; and (iii) fuzzy sets in four primary databases, namely, IEEE Xplore, Web of Science, Elsevier ScienceDirect and Springer. These databases include literature that focuses on FMCDM. The resulting final set after the filtering process includes 170 articles, which are classified into four categories. The first, second, third and fourth categories include articles that used a type-1 fuzzy set with the TOPSIS method, a type-2 fuzzy set with the TOPSIS method, two fuzzy membership functions and a survey paper, respectively. The basic attributes of this topic include motivations for utilising FMCDM, open challenges and limitations that obstruct utilisation and recommendations to researchers for increasing the approval and application of FMCDM. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.