Applying fuzzy linguistic variable and ELECTRE method in R&D project evaluation and selection

In general, R&D project evaluation and selection is a group multi-criteria decision problem (GMCDM). There are many quantitative and qualitative factors will influence the R&D projects selection. A more realistic approach may be use linguistic assessments instead of numerical values to solve the problems. Therefore, decision-makers¿ opinions are described by 2-tuple linguistic variables which can be expressed in different types. In this paper, a transformation method will be presented to transform the non-homogeneous linguistic information to a standard linguistic term set. Then, a new decision method is proposed by combining 2-tuple linguistic variables with ELECTRE method to determine the ranking order of R&D projects.