Title: Selection of internet assessment vendor using TOPSIS method in fuzzy environment

Authors: Saurav Datta; Chitrasen Samantra; Siba Sankar Mahapatra; Goutam Mondal; Partha Sarathi Chakraborty; Gautam Majumdar

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, India ' Tata Motors Limited, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand 831010, India ' Department of Adult and Continuing Education and Extension, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700032, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700032, India

Abstract: In recent days an explosion in demand is being resulted for internet-based assessment solutions. The number of internet assessment vendors has increased dramatically, and they differ widely in offerings, capabilities, technology, assessment expertise, customer support and other factors. Choosing an appropriate vendor capable of fulfilling various needs and become a value-added partner can seem somewhat daunting. Conventional approaches for selection and evaluation of vendors separately tend to be less effective in dealing with the imprecise of attributes assessment individually. Hence, this study aims to propose an effective integrated fuzzy multi-attribute group decision making (FMAGDM) approach to deal both qualitative and quantitative attributes associated with internet assessment vendor selection criteria's. In this paper, a technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method has been adopted in a fuzzy environment for selection and ranking of internet assessment vendor based on decision makers' linguistic viewpoint on various criteria attributes. Generalised trapezoidal fuzzy numbers are used to express linguistic variables that consider making a fuzzy decision matrix. A numerical illustration has been reported to illustrate the procedural hierarchy of fuzzy-TOPSIS method in relation to a vendor selection problem.

Keywords: internet assessment vendors; vendor selection; fuzzy sets; fuzzy logic; TOPSIS; multi-attribute group decision making; fuzzy MADM; group decision making; FMAGDM; application service providers; ASPs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBPSCM.2013.051645

International Journal of Business Performance and Supply Chain Modelling, 2013 Vol.5 No.1, pp.1 - 27

Received: 30 Aug 2011
Accepted: 22 Jul 2012
Published online: 30 Jan 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article