Selecting plant location via a fuzzy TOPSIS approach

A fuzzy TOPSIS approach for selecting plant location is proposed, where the ratings of various alternative locations under various criteria and the weights of various criteria are assessed in linguistic terms represented by fuzzy numbers. In the proposed method, the ratings and, weights assigned by decision makers are averaged and normalised into a comparable scale. The membership function of each normalised weighted rating can be developed by interval arithmetic of fuzzy numbers. To avoid complicated aggregation of fuzzy numbers, these normalised weighted ratings are defuzzified into crisp values. A closeness coefficient is defined to determine the ranking order of alternative locations by calculating the distances to both the ideal and negative-ideal solutions. Using the suggested method, the decision makers' fuzzy assessments with different rating viewpoints and the trade-off among different criteria are considered in the aggregation procedure to assure more convincing decision making. A numerical example demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed method.