A Supplier Selection Decision-Making Approach for Complex Product Development Based on Hesitant Fuzzy Information

During the development process of complex products, selecting the best desirable alternative supplier is a challenge since an improperly selected alternative may cause losing capacity and increasing the cycle time and cost of development for a company. For this multiple-attribute decision-making problem of supplier selection, in this paper, a supplier selection problem in which the decision data are hesitant fuzzy information and the attribute weight is unknown in complex product development is investigated, and a supplier selection decision-making approach based on hesitant fuzzy information is proposed. Firstly, a bidirectional projection based on hesitant fuzzy information is established, and then the measurement equation for the degree of closeness is improved. Further, an attribute weight determination model which minimizes the projection total deviation for the hesitant fuzzy elements is constructed. By solving this model, scientific and reasonable attribute weights are provided. Subsequently, an illustrative example is employed to not only give the ranking result of alternative suppliers but also demonstrate the validity and feasibility of the developed approach. Meanwhile, sensitivity analysis and comparative analysis are put forward to illustrate the stability of the given final ranking result and the advantages and reliability of the constructed method. For alternative or strategy selection, this proposed approach can be used as a decision-making means when uncertainties are inherent.