Grey Theory, VIKOR and TOPSIS Approaches for Strategic System Selection with Linguistic Preferences: a Stepwise Strategy Approach

The concept of Stepwise Strategy Approach (SSA) is introduced to deal with a number of problems arising in the current state of technology. This new idea is combined with the knowledge of Grey Theory for adding flexibility to decision making process. Grey theory is useful for grasping the ambiguity existing in the utilized information and the fuzziness appears with the human judgments and preferences. A useful source of information for Fuzzy Grey and decision making using more than one decision makers is provided. A case study on system selection comprised of 12 attributes and 4 alternatives is constructed and solved by the proposed method and the results are analyzed. For the validation of the results obtained by the Grey theory, the fuzzy VIKOR and Fuzzy TOPSIS are employed for computational purposes. The results of these three approaches on the proposed case study are closely related. The proposed “Stepwise Strategy” approach for implementing a new technology in industry, although the management of an older compatible type of technology along with the grey theory concept and data whitenization are available, is expected to be a competitive alternative for decision making.