JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT MANUFACTURING, cilt.18, sa.2, ss.197-207, 2007 (SCI-Expanded)
In this paper, fuzzy set theory is used to select the quality-based investment in small firm. Here a new algorithm, which will consider both exogenous and endogenous variables as factors, is proposed to formulate the problem. The structure of the algorithm is based on fuzzy decision-making system (FDMS), which uses fuzzy control rules. Hence, one exogenous factor and five endogenous factors mentioned above are determined as input variables and fuzzified using membership function concept. Then, the weights of these factors are fuzzified to ensure the consistency of the decision maker when assigning the importance of one factor over another. Applying IF-THEN decision rules, quality- based investments are scored. Also the comparison with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Linguistic Approach (FLA) in respect to these scores is presented.