A fuzzy rule-based approach for screening international distribution centres

In practical situations, a decision maker often has to deal with numerous alternatives in evaluating and selecting the most suitable international distribution centre (IDC) location for enhancing the organizational competitiveness. To improve the effectiveness of the decision making process, it is critical to reduce the number of alternatives through screening so that the decision maker can focus on the most attractive alternatives for further consideration. This paper presents a fuzzy rule-based approach to effectively screen decision alternatives in adequately solving the problem of evaluating and selecting IDC locations. Case-based reasoning with the use of fuzzy production rules is adopted to screen out unattractive alternatives based on past experience in a specific decision making situation. A decision support system based on the proposed approach is presented to improve the effectiveness of the screening process. An example is given to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach in improving the effectiveness of the decision making process in multicriteria decision making. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.