he VIKOR (Vlse Kriterijumska Optimizacija Kompromisno Resenje which means multi-criteria optimization and compromise solution, in Serbian) method has already become a quite popular multi-criteria decision making tool for its computational simplicity and solution accuracy. This method focuses on selecting and ranking from a set of feasible alternatives, and determines compromise solution for a problem with conflicting criteria to help the decision maker in reaching a final course of action. It determines the compromise ranking list based on the particular measure of closeness to the ideal solution. Depending upon the type of decision problem and necessity of the decision maker, apart from VIKOR method, different variants of it, like comprehensive VIKOR, fuzzy VIKOR, regret theory-based VIKOR, modified VIKOR and interval VIKOR methods have also been subsequently developed. In this paper, the ranking performance of original VIKOR method and its five variants is analyzed based on two demonstrative examples. It is observed that interval VIKOR method performs unsatisfactorily and when the information in a decision problem is imprecise, fuzzy VIKOR method should always be preferred. But, for any decision problem, original VIKOR is the best method for solution without unnecessarily complicating the related mathematical computations.

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) offer opportunities for the manufacturers to improve their technology, competitiveness and profitability through a highly efficient and focused approach to manufacturing effectiveness. Justification, evaluation and selection of FMSs have now been receiving significant attention in the manufacturing environment. Evaluating alternative FMSs in the presence of multiple conflicting criteria and performance measures is often a difficult task for the decision maker. Preference ranking tools are special types of multi-criteria decision-making methods in which the decision maker’s preferences on criteria are aggregated together to arrive at the final evaluation and selection of the alternatives. This paper deals with the application of six most potential preference ranking methods for selecting the best FMS for a given manufacturing organization. It is observed that although the performances of these six methods are almost similar, ORESTE (Organization, Rangement Et Synthese De Donnes Relationnelles) method slightly outperforms the others. These methods use some preference function or utility value or Besson ranking of criteria and alternatives, to indicate how much an alternative is preferred to the others. Most of these methods need quantification of criteria weights or different preference parameters, but ORESTE method, being an ordinal outranking approach, only requires ordinal data and attribute rankings according to their importance. Therefore, it is particularly applicable to those situations where the decision maker is unable to provide crisp evaluation data and attribute weights.

Evaluation of proper supplier for manufacturing organizations is one of the most challenging problems in real time manufacturing environment due to a wide variety of customer demands. It has become more and more complicated to meet the challenges of international competitiveness and as the decision makers need to assess a wide range of alternative suppliers based on a set of conflicting criteria. Thus, the main objective of supplier selection is to select highly potential supplier through which all the set goals regarding the purchasing and manufacturing activity can be achieved. Because of these reasons, supplier selection has got considerable attention by the academicians and researchers. This paper presents a combined multi-criteria decision making methodology for supplier evaluation for given industrial applications. The proposed methodology is based on a compromise ranking method combined with Grey Interval Numbers considering different cardinal and ordinal criteria and their relative importance. A ‘supplier selection index’ is also proposed to help evaluation and ranking the alternative suppliers. Two examples are illustrated to demonstrate the potentiality and applicability of the proposed method.

Selection of material for a specific engineering component, which plays a significant role in its design and proper functioning, is often treated as a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem where the most suitable material is to be chosen based on a given set of conflicting criteria. For solving these MCDM problems, the designers do not generally know what should be the optimal number of criteria required for arriving at the best decisive action. Those criteria should be independent to each other and their number should usually limit to seven plus or minus two. In this paper, five material selection problems are solved using three common MCDM techniques to demonstrate the effect of number of criteria on the final rankings of the material alternatives. It is interesting to observe that the choices of the best suited materials solely depend on the criterion having the maximum priority value. It is also found that among the three MCDM methods, the ranking performance of VIKOR (Vlse Kriterijumska Optimizacija Kompromisno Resenje) method is the best.