Combining fuzzy weight average with fuzzy inference system for material substitution selection in electric industry

Material selection is a very important issue for an electronics company as it includes many qualitative or quantification factors. The material selection problem is associated with design and manufacturing problems which have been widely investigated. This study develops a hybrid fuzzy decision-making model which combines the fuzzy weight average (FWA) with the fuzzy inference system (FIS) for material substitution selection in the electronics industry. FWA is employed to select a substitute material in an uncertain environment, while FIS is used for reasoning purposes. FWA with α-cuts arithmetic (FWA_α-cut) is a popularly technology in decision-making problems. However, FWA_α-cut may result in the following unanticipated situations: (1) unclear decision situations; (2) undecided results expressed by fuzzy membership functions; and (3) high computational complexity. Therefore, a fuzzy weight average with the weakest t-norm (FWA_Tω) is designed as an alternative method for group decision making. In contrast to traditional FWA methods, FWA_Tω obtains more visible fuzzy results for decision makers with lower computational complexity, and can provide exacter estimation by the weakest t-norm operations in uncertain environment. Thus, the proposed hybrid fuzzy decision-making model imitates an expert’s experiences and can estimate substitution purchasing in various statuses. A real material substitution selection case is employed to examine the feasibility of the proposed model; experimental results reveal that the proposed model performs better than the traditional FWA model in coping with material substitution selection problems.