Modified Fuzzy Group Decision Making Combining AHP, RRP & TOPSIS for OPV supplier's selection

Abstract

Procuring Off-shore Patrol Vessels, OPV, is a challenging mission for governments and their forces to accomplish their respective visions. This strategic procurement is subject to several deliberate fields constraints and decision making. The cost is not the only criterion for the supply management process since the life cycle cost englobes the direct and indirect, recurring and non-recurring, incurred or estimated to be incurred costs in the demand identification, the conceptual design preparation, the production and handling, the support services and last but not least in the disposal of a vessel. Thus, the design shall be fitted for future retrofits and upgrades and equipped with and not limited to the standard systems. After surveying several experienced parties and skilled personnel, a list of shipyards selection criteria is configured. These manufacturers are subject to two main segregation phases, where the first is general and the second relies on the multi-criteria decision-making tools to represent the most preferred alternative. This thesis proposes the headmost technique to manage the procurement of a complex project, predominantly a maritime and military vessel. With regard to the possibility to apply the same weights and strategy for other maritime and naval vessels, AHP and TOPSIS are modified to cope with the rank reversal problem, RRP and to compound the different decision makers feedbacks and backgrounds in a unified approach. The modification for the combination of AHP-TOPSIS is not limited to the normalization and weighting procedures but also in applying threshold decision alternatives. The expressions of importance, performance and preference are linguistic to tame the values identification vagueness. These declarations are fuzzified in the MCDM approach to result in the reliable yet consistent SS This thesis presents the first OPV suppliers’ selection method, and supply management using a “Modified Fuzzy Group Decision Making Combining AHP, RRP and TOPSIS”. In a nutshell, chapter 1 will introduce the necessity of procuring the multipurpose OPV and the lack of information and guidelines in the field of assessing the maritime technical and administrative offers. Chapter 2 founds the strategy to examine vessels. Since a shipyard’s offer comprises two main sections: technical and administrative, the procurers shall accurately test each equipment, spec, department separately and wisely. The dimensions of a vessel differ between manufacturers; therefore, the buyers shall compare the proposals to their requirements and ascertain their compliances. The selected administrative criteria will complement the approach to end up with their suitable delivery and sustain the procured vessels support. Thus, Chapter 3 determines the criteria selection primordiality and their effective weighting tool, while chapter 4 identifies gaps in the MCDM tools and bias, and propose the acceptable and convenable decision-making approach. The fuzzification and linguistic scoring of the alternatives and attributes prove its vitality in the field of SS as proven in chapter 4. Subsequently, chapter 5 will study, test and analyze the thesis contribution in the SS field.