An integrated model of fuzzy multi-criteria decision making and stochastic programming for the evaluating and ranking of advanced manufacturing technologies

Investment appraisal in advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) has been receiving considerable attention over the past three decades. As stated in numerous studies, traditional engineering economic methods cannot adequately justify investments in AMTs. Thus, beside these methods, some other solutions have been proposed in this field. The methods applied in the evaluation of AMTs can be classified into four groups including economic, strategic, analytical and integrated methods. In this paper, an integrated model is presented for the evaluation of AMTs. The model is developed according to a fuzzy multi-criteria decision making procedure. It is assumed that a group of decision makers evaluate different AMT alternatives according to certain strategic and economic criteria. The importance of the criteria and the weights of the alternatives versus the criteria are expressed using linguistic variables set by the decision makers. To compute the economic criterion of each alternative, a linear program with chance constraints is proposed. Finally, using different fuzzy operators, the AMT alternatives are scored and ranked. In this regard, an example is presented to show the performance of the model.