Comparison of fuzzy numbers based on preference

Ranking fuzzy numbers plays an important role in a fuzzy decision-making process. However, fuzzy numbers may not be easily ordered into one sequence due to the overlap between them. A new approach is introduced to detect the overlapped fuzzy numbers based on the concept of similarity measure, incorporating the preference of the decision-maker into the fuzzy ranking process. Numerical examples and comparisons with other methods are presented to evaluate the new method. The computational process of the proposed method is straightforward and is practically capable of comparing similar fuzzy numbers. The proposed method is an absolute ranking and no pairwise comparison of fuzzy numbers is necessary. Furthermore, through some examples discussed in this work, it is proved that the proposed method possesses several good characteristics compared to other methods examined in this work.