Sustainable supply chain management using approximate fuzzy DEMATEL method

This study develops the approximate fuzzy Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (AFDEMATEL) to analyze uncertain influential factors. The approximate fuzzy arithmetic operations under the weakest t-norm (Tω) arithmetic operations to evaluate sustainable supply chain management based on AFDEMATEL. The fuzzy DEMATEL is one of important decision-making method under uncertain environment. The fuzzy DEMATEL had to be developed for clearly display expert's options with linguistic variables. The fuzzy operations usually adopt α-cut arithmetic in fuzzy DEMATEL. In this research, the fuzzy DEMATEL technology is substituted with the AFDEMATEL technology. In the sustainable supply chain management example, the AFDEMATEL is employed to find fuzzy cause and effect relationships among criteria. Particular note should be made of the following: [1] the fuzzy DEMATEL with α-cut arithmetic model cannot exactly handle fuzzy cause and effect relationships under uncertain environment, and the fuzziness accumulation phenomenon of the α-cut arithmetic may influence final fuzzy cause and effect relationships; and [2] the approximate fuzzy arithmetic operations gives a justifiable fuzziness spread to analyze fuzzy cause and effect relationships. In the case of selection of cans suppliers, the AFDEMATEL examines the influential factors. Proposed method provides justifiable fuzzy cause and effect relationships with approximate fuzzy arithmetic and can analyze across quadrants phenomenon under uncertain environment, since decision-makers usually want to accurately estimate uncertain influential factors.