A method for the selection of customized equipment suppliers

The acquisition of custom design equipment may be accomplished by selecting a supplier to launch a product development project. That selection is usually performed by a bidding process that requires a procedure for the evaluation of proposals. This paper proposes a modification to a method for multi-criteria decision analysis as a support in evaluation. The method, originally implemented by several authors, is based on a combination of fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The proposed modifications permit the direct entry of data to three types of parameters (numerical parameters, binary descriptors and linguistic variables). The calculation of weights for each evaluation criterion is performed by a new approach to fuzzy AHP that facilitates the assessment and permits the simultaneous verification of consistency. The proposed improved method includes a procedure for the detection and analysis of possible problems of rank reversal. A numerical example is presented using data from an actual case of a request for proposals for the supply of customized lottery ticket printers. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.