An Integrated Fuzzy MCDM Method for the Evaluation of R&D Projects

Abstract

Research and development (R&D) activities are essential to guarantee continuity of firms, meet customer requirements and keep ahead in competition. R&D project selection constitutes a significant part of project management in order to achieve the desired results and outputs. In this study, an integrated fuzzy multi-criteria group decision making approach is developed for R&D project selection. The problem includes a hierarchical structure of the criteria, uncertainty in evaluating the relative importance of criteria/sub-criteria and rating of candidate projects. The method employs the ordered weighted average (OWA) operator as the aggregation operator, which helps to fully reflect the real behavior of the decision makers in group decision making problems. Fuzzy integral method, which does not require the assumption of the mutual independence of criteria, is used to rank the alternatives. The case study is conducted in a small-sized company in Turkey, which designs and produces special purpose machines. A R&D project selection model is developed to maximize the desired outputs. The results of the analysis show that technological, environmental, marketing, organizational, national and financial issues should be considered simultaneously in the evaluation process. The proposed method is shown to be efficient, generalizable and practical and it has several significant merits compared to the other methods.