The rationalization of logistics activities and processes is very important in the business and efficiency of every company. In this respect, transportation as a subsystem of logistics, whether internal or external, is potentially a huge area for achieving significant savings. In this paper, the emphasis is placed upon the internal transport logistics of a paper manufacturing company. It is necessary to rationalize the movement of vehicles in the company's internal transport, that is, for the majority of the transport to be transferred to rail transport, because the company already has an industrial track installed in its premises. To do this, it is necessary to purchase at least two used wagons. The problem is formulated as a multi-criteria decision model with eight criteria and eight alternatives. The paper presents a new approach based on a combination of the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) method and rough numbers, which is used for ranking the potential solutions and selecting the most suitable one. The rough Best-Worst Method (BWM) was used to determine the weight values of the criteria. The results obtained using a combination of these two methods in their rough form were verified by means of a sensitivity analysis consisting of a change in the weight criteria and comparison with the following methods in their conventional and rough forms: the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Technique for Ordering Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and MultiAttributive Border Approximation area Comparison (MABAC). The results show very high stability of the model and ranks that are the same or similar in different scenarios.
The Best Worst Method (BWM) represents a powerful tool for multi-criteria decision-making and defining criteria weight coefficients. However, while solving real-world problems, there are specific multi-criteria problems where several criteria exert the same influence on decision-making. In such situations, the traditional postulates of the BWM imply the defining of one best criterion and one worst criterion from within a set of observed criteria. In this paper, an improvement of the traditional BWM that eliminates this problem is presented. The improved BWM (BWM-I) offers the possibility for decision-makers to express their preferences even in cases where there is more than one best and worst criterion. The development enables the following: (1) the BWM-I enables us to express experts’ preferences irrespective of the number of the best/worst criteria in a set of evaluation criteria; (2) the application of the BWM-I reduces the possibility of making a mistake while comparing pairs of criteria, which increases the reliability of the results; and (3) the BWM-I is characterized by its flexibility, which is expressed through the possibility of the realistic processing of experts’ preferences irrespective of the number of the criteria that have the same significance and the possibility of the transformation of the BWM-I into the traditional BWM (should there be a unique best/worst criterion). To present the applicability of the BWM-I, it was applied to defining the weight coefficients of the criteria in the field of renewable energy and their ranking.
This paper presents a new approach for the treatment of uncertainty and imprecision based on interval-valued fuzzy-rough numbers (IVFRNs). IVFRNs make a decision making possible using only the internal knowledge from the data, using objective indeterminacy without the need to rely on models of any assumption. Namely, instead of subjectively entering external uncertainties, the structure of the given data is used. Taking into account the given assumptions, we developed an original multi-criteria model based upon the IVFR approach. In the multi-criteria model the traditional MAIRCA (Multi-Attribute Ideal-Real Comparative Analysis) method was modified. The model was tested and validated on a case study, considering selection of the optimal landing operations point for overcoming water obstacles. The sensitivity analysis of the IVFRN MAIRCA model was carried out through 24 scenarios which showed that our results are of a high stability degree.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.