A simple and effective multi-criteria decision-making methodology named as “Best Holistic Adaptable Ranking of Attributes Technique (BHARAT)” is proposed that can be used in single- as well as group decision-making scenarios of the industrial environment. The attributes data for various alternatives can be quantitative or qualitative (i.e., expressed in linguistic terms). This paper proposes to transform the qualitative attributes into quantitative attributes by means of simple linear scales rather than complex fuzzy scales. The proposed BHARAT method normalizes the data with reference to the “best” alternative corresponding to an attribute and the normalization procedure is repeated for all the attributes to get the normalized data. A group of decision-makers or a decision-maker assigns ranks to the attributes according to how important they are deemed to be, and these ranks are then transformed into the proper weights. The total scores of the alternatives are calculated by multiplying the weights of the attributes by the corresponding normalized data of the attributes for different alternatives. Four industrial case studies are presented to illustrate the potential of the suggested BHARAT method. The first case study deals with the problem of an automated warehouse selection for a large industrial plant involving a single decision-maker, 13 attributes, and 4 alternative warehouses; the second case study deals with the problem of sustainable maintenance service provider selection for a large petrochemical plant involving fuzzy group decision-making with 5 decision-makers, 9 attributes, and 4 alternative maintenance service providers; the third case study deals with the problem of alternative strategy selection for implementation of a make-to-order system for passenger car manufacturers involving 6 factors, 18 sub-factors, and 3 alternative strategies; and the fourth case study deals with the problem of process parameters selection in a sustainable high speed turning operation involving 4 attributes and 9 alternative sets of experimental conditions. The results of the proposed decision-making method and its second version are compared with the other popular decision-making methods. The proposed method and its another version are proved simple, effective, powerful, flexible, easy to apply, do not require the use of fuzzy logic, offer logical and consistent procedures to assign weights to the attributes, and are applicable to different decision-making scenarios of the industries. Part-1 of this paper describes the applications of the BHARAT method to multi-attribute decision-making problems and Part-2 describes the evaluation of Pareto solutions using the BHARAT method in multiple objective decision-making problems.

A simple multi-attribute decision-making method based on ranking of alternatives and attributes is proposed in this paper. The method ranks the alternatives with respect to each of the attributes based on the corresponding performance measures. Similarly, the ranks are assigned to the attributes based on their importance as perceived by the decision maker. The ranks assigned to the alternatives with respect to each of the attributes and the ranks assigned to the attributes are converted to appropriate weights and the final composite scores of the alternatives are computed using these weights. An interesting feature of the proposed method is that the qualitative attributes (i.e. the attributes expressed in linguistic terms) need not require the use of fuzzy logic. The proposed method is very simple and useful in situations of limited time availability, presence of qualitative attributes, imprecise/incomplete/partial data, and decision maker’s limited attention and capability to process the information. The proposed method is proved easier and better compared to the other widely used decision-making methods. The proposed method will be tested further on more realistic problems of the industrial environment and the results will be reported soon.