Selection of chromite processing plant site using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP)

Based on existence of the chromite deposits in the Sistan and Baluchestan province in Iran, and also various applications of chromite in different industries, it is expected that the establishment of chromite processing plant is required in the erelong. The geographical location of a processing plant can have a strong influence on the success of an industrial venture. The processing plant site selection is a multi-criteria decision problem. The conventional methods used for a plant location selection are inadequate for dealing with the imprecise or vague nature of a linguistic assessment. To overcome this difficulty, the fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methods are proposed. This paper presents an application of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method based on the fuzzy sets (Fuzzy AHP) used to select an appropriate site for a chromite processing plant in the Sistan and Baluchestan province. For this purpose, based on the concentration of chromite deposits in different regions of the province, four feasible alternatives including the Zahedan, Khash, Iranshahr, and Nikshahr cities are selected for a chromite processing plant. The quantitative and qualitative criteria such as availability of raw materials, availability of labors, education, climatic conditions, environmental impacts, infra-structural facilities and security, and local community considerations are used to compare the feasible alternatives. Finally, the alternatives are ranked, and a convenient location is recommended for the construction of the chromite processing plant. The results obtained show that the city of Zahedan is the best alternative.