Selection of Alternative Filling Material in The Bed Production with AHP and ELECTRE Methods

Bed production has an important market in the furniture sector. In spite of the fact that sponge is generally preferred as filler in the production process of beds, increasing prices in recent years and the preference of new materials with the development of alternative filling materials have increased. Recently it is seen other than sponge, the granule, wadding, and STW are also used as filling material in bed production. From the management point of view, the choice of filler is an important decision problem that depends on the situation of the business and many objective and subjective criteria must be taken into consideration. It is appropriate to examine such a problem with the Analytical Hierarchy Method (AHP) and the ELECTRE method, which have the ability to make quantitative evaluations and synthesize factor weights from subjective judgments. The criteria for selection of the filler material and the extent to which the criterion will affect the evaluation are important decision points. The opinions of experts in bed production were consulted to determine the criteria to be used in the evaluation. The obtained results show that four basic criteria must be taken into consideration in the selection of filler material. In this study, AHP was used for determining the criteria weights, and ELECTRE methods were used for the selection of the best filling material. The results showed that wadding is the optimum filler material for bed production.