ZBWM: The Z-number extension of Best Worst Method and its application for supplier development

Date

2018

Authors

Aboutorab, Hamed
Saberi, Morteza
Rajabi Asadabadi, Mehdi
Hussain, Omar
Chang, Elizabeth

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Elsevier

Abstract

Best Worst Method (BWM) has recently been proposed as a method for Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). Studies show that BWM compared with other methods such as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), leads to lower inconsistency of the results while reducing the number of required pairwise comparisons. MCDM methods such as BWM require accurate information. However, it often happens in practice that a level of uncertainty accompanies the information. The main aim of this paper is to address this problem and provide an integration of BWM and Z-numbers, namely ZBWM. Providing BWM with Z-numbers enables the BWM method to handle the uncertainty of information of a multi-criteria decision. Additionally, the capabilities of the proposed method in the process of utilizing the linguistic information dealing with big data are highlighted. The proposed method is examined to address a supplier development problem. By experimental results, we show that ZBWM results lower inconsistency when compared with BWM. A Z-number contains subjectivity in its fuzzy part, which can be addressed in future applications of ZBWM.

Description

Keywords

Z-numbers, BWM, ZBWM, Fuzzy sets theory, Unstructured data

Citation

Source

Expert Systems with Applications

Type

Journal article

Book Title

Entity type

Access Statement

Open Access

License Rights

CC BY-NC-ND

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