Comparative analysis of fuzzy multi-criteria decision making methods for selecting sustainable battery suppliers of battery swapping station

ABSTRACT

Sustainable battery supplier (SBS) selection of battery-swapping station belongs to a complex multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem due to the fact that included multiple and often conflicting criteria. To this end, this study presents a comparative analysis of selecting SBS using four fuzzy MCDM methods, and a case is executed to compare the ranking results obtained by the proposed four MCDM methods. From the weighting results of criteria, it is observed that economic criteria is the first priority in all evaluation criteria, followed by the technical, social, and environmental criteria in descending order. In terms of the priorities and recommendations of multiple SBSs for the battery swapping station, the comparative analysis demonstrates that the rankings of all alternatives obtained by all approaches are in high agreement, except that determined by fuzzy VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) slightly varies from the other three approaches, and none of these MCDM methods are deemed to be absolutely “perfect”. If possible, we recommend that more than one method should be applied to the same problem to provide a more comprehensive decision basis. If not possible, it is suggested to use the fuzzy VIKOR since it shows more superior potential in sustainable supplier decision analysis.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable battery supplier selection
• intuitionistic fuzzy sets
• interval-valued fuzzy sets
• fuzzy MCDM methods

Acknowledgements

This research is funded by Systematic Major Research Project of China Railway (Nos. P2021×008and P2022X012), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. U1934216 and 71871226), General Project of the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 2022JJ30057), and Self-exploration and Innovation Project for Graduate Students of Central South University (No. 2023ZZTS0376).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15435075.2023.2259977

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Nos. U1934216 and 71871226]; Self-exploration and Innovation Project for Graduate Students of Central South University [No. 2023ZZTS0376]; Systematic Major Research Project of China Railway [Nos. P2021X008 and P2022X012]; General Project of the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 2022JJ30057].