Title: A fuzzy analytical hierarchy process approach for prioritising the buyers in selling by-product of a sugar plant

Authors: A. Rajkumar; P. Malliga

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Rajalakshmi Engineering College, Chennai – 602105, Tamilnadu, India ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Anna University, Chennai – 600025, Tamilnadu, India

Abstract: World sugar market is not healthier because of higher production cost and lower selling price of sugar. Efforts have been taken to elucidate this while remedies include improving the revenues of sugar plant from selling of sugarcane by-products like molasses. Buyer selection and prioritisation is very complex since it involves quantitative and qualitative multi-criterion. In most of the real time problems, some of the decisions can be exactly assessed while others cannot. Essentially, the uncertainty in the preference judgements gives rise to uncertainty in ranking of alternatives in selecting the appropriate buyer. In this paper, a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process-based (FAHP) buyer selection model has been formulated and implemented in a sugar plant in Tamilnadu, India. The fuzziness of the decision maker for dealing with complex decisions involving multiple criteria in systems of many levels is considered here. The main and sub-criteria influencing the buyer selection are identified for structuring the FAHP model and finally the buyers were prioritised. The results exhibit the prioritised buyer and other alternatives.

Keywords: fuzzy AHP; analytical hierarchy process; FAHP; sugar plant; multicriteria decision making; MCDM; buyer selection; by-products; buyer prioritisation; uncertainty; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2016.075664

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2016 Vol.24 No.1, pp.94 - 112

Received: 18 Oct 2014
Accepted: 03 Feb 2015
Published online: 31 Mar 2016 *

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