A New Car Selection in the Market using TOPSIS Technique

Now days purchasing of automobiles i.e, especially cars in the market is very tough task to the customers due to day to day changes in various technical and operational parameter specifications like style, life span, fuel economy, suspension and cost etc. Therefore to overcome from this confusion state some selection procedure techniques are required. TOPSIS is one the selection procedure technique is adopted for this problem. This technique provides a base for decision-making processes where there are limited numbers of choices but each has large number of attributes. In this paper some cars are considered with different attributes and select the best car using TOPSIS technique. Keywords— TOPSIS, MCDM, Car Selection, Normalized decision matrix, Positive and Negative Ideal solutions, Relative closeness, Ranking. INTRODUCTION The selection of automobile is crucial for the purchaser due to the confusion created by fake publicity of the dealers. Choosing just the right one becomes a critical decision making problem. The possible budget is then a constraint in the decision on which car to buy. Other important criteria‘s while selection include: fuel economy, comfort and convenience features, life span, suspension, style and cost. An appropriate decision-making method for selecting the best car is useful to both customers and manufacturers. LITERATURE REVIEW Hwang and Yoon (1981) proposed that the ranking of alternatives will be based on the shortest distance from the Positive Ideal Solution (PIS) and the farthest from the Negative Ideal Solution (NIS). Hsu-Shih Shiha, et al (2007) investigated on extension of a Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM) technique, to a group decision environment. MajidBehzadian, et al (2012) had given review on state-of the-art survey of ―Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)‖ applications. METHODOLOGY The objective of this work is to develop TOPSIS method for car selection. In order to comply with collecting quantitative and qualitative data for TOPSIS car selection model that could be applied by a seven steps approach was performed to ensure successful implementation. Selection criteria Buying a new car is a big decision-making problem and reflection of customer preference. Customer choice must be made among several cars for a given application, it is necessary to compare their performance characteristics in proper manner [1]. Some of the main criteria‘s of four wheelers are fuel economy, quality, life span, style, engine power, engine limits, and dimensions of the car and cost of the car. The importance of these criteria is commonly known and thus not elaborated. Fig.1. Selection criteria of TOPSIS International Journal of Engineering Research and General Science Volume 2, Issue 4, June-July, 2014 ISSN 2091-2730 178 www.ijergs.org TOPSIS Method TOPSISwas first presented by Yoon (1980) and Hwang and Yoon (1981), for solving Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problems based on the concept that the chosen alternative should have the shortest Euclidian distance from the Positive Ideal Solution (PIS) and the farthest from the Negative Ideal Solution (NIS). For instance, PIS maximizes the benefit and minimizes the cost, whereas the NIS maximizes the cost and minimizes the benefit. It assumes that each criterion require to be maximized or minimized. TOPSIS is a simple and useful technique for ranking a number of possible alternatives according to closeness to the ideal solution. The TOPSIS procedure is based on an intuitive and simple idea, which is that the optimal ideal solution, having the maximum benefit, is obtained by selecting the best alternative which is far from the most unsuitable alternative, having minimal benefits [3]. The ideal solution should have a rank of ̳1‘ (one), while the worst alternative should have a rank approaching ̳0‘ (zero). As ideal cars are not probable and each alternative would have some intermediate ranking between the ideal solution extremes. Regardless of absolute accuracy of rankings, comparison of number of different cars under the same set of selection criteria allows accurate weighting of relative car suitability and hence optimal car selection. Mathematically the application of the TOPSIS method involves the following steps. Step 1:Establish the decision matrix The first step of the TOPSIS method involves the construction of a Decision Matrix (DM).