An interval type-2 fuzzy sets-based TODIM method and its application to green supplier selection

Abstract

With the increasing awareness and significant environmental pressures from various stakeholders, companies have realized the significance of selecting green suppliers to their supply chain activities, which involves multiple criteria with uncertainty and the decision makers’ behaviour with irrational. Interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2 FSs) have advantages in modelling uncertainty over type-1 fuzzy sets. And TODIM is an useful non-linear prospect model for selecting the irrationally determined alternatives, but the ratings and weights are crisp values. In this paper, we develop the IT2 FSs-based TODIM method to select green supplier. First, we introduce a new distance computing method for IT2 FSs to assist the dominance models to deal with gains (losses) computation. Second, we identify the gains (losses) computing expression through comparing the ranking values of the IT2 FSs evaluations, and obtain the dominance degree of one alternative over others. Third, we use the presented IT2 FSs ranking method using possibility mean and variation coefficient concepts to defuzzify the dominance degree, and obtain the crisp global performance to select the best alternative. Finally, we also apply the proposed IT2 FSs-based TODIM method to green supplier selection for automobile manufacturers.

Keywords:

• interval type-2 fuzzy sets
• TODIM method
• distance computation
• fuzzy multiple criteria decision making
• green supplier selection

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71371049,71501098), the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (KJQN201626), and the Humanities and social science fund project of Nanjing Agricultural University (SK2015018).