Title: Performance evaluation of arc welding processes for the manufacturing of pressure vessel using novel hybrid MCDM technique

Authors: Manoj Mathew; Santosh Kumar Patanwar; Sanjay Gupta; Taranjeet Sachdev

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shri Shankaracharya Institute of Professional Management and Technology Raipur, Chhattisgarh 492015, India ' Production Engineering Department, Shri Shankaracharya Institute of Professional Management and Technology Raipur, Chhattisgarh 492015, India ' Sri Aurobindo College of Commerce and Management, Ludhiana, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shri Shankaracharya Institute of Professional Management and Technology Raipur, Chhattisgarh 492015, India

Abstract: Selection of welding process during the manufacturing of pressure vessel is conventionally done by the manufacturer depending upon his/her experience of welding process. This process ignores many conflicting criteria affecting the selection of best welding process. So, researchers have used MCDM techniques in the selection of the best welding process, in which subjective preferences having vagueness are given by the decision maker. Fuzzy set theory is effective in handling vagueness and subjectivity in the decision-making process, while best worst method (BWM) can be an alternative of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) as it requires less comparison. So, a novel hybrid fuzzy MCDM approach combining fuzzy AHP, BWM and fuzzy TOPSIS is proposed, which delivers reliable and robust solution. A numerical illustration with four welding alternative and seven evaluating criteria is solved. It is found that, submerged-arc welding is the best welding process for the manufacturing of pressure vessel.

Keywords: multi-criteria decision making; MCDM; fuzzy AHP; fuzzy TOPSIS; best worst method; BWM; welding process evaluation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIDS.2021.118060

International Journal of Information and Decision Sciences, 2021 Vol.13 No.3, pp.235 - 253

Received: 10 Dec 2019
Accepted: 01 Mar 2020
Published online: 11 Oct 2021 *

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