A comparison between intuitionistic and hesitant fuzzy applied to supplier selection group decision-making problems

Supplier selection and evaluation is approached in the literature as a multi-criteria decision problem in which usually more than one decision-maker has to judge the importance of criteria and the performance of suppliers. Fuzzy techniques are commonly applied to deal with the uncertainty in the evaluation process. Intuitionistic and hesitant fuzzy representations have been applied to group decision problems. However, none of the studies in the literature presents a comparison of these two fuzzy representations when applied to multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) problems. Thus, this paper presents the results of a comparative study of the intuitionist fuzzy and the hesitant fuzzy representations applied to supplier selection problem. The techniques were implemented and tested in a pilot application to a textile manufacturing company. The comparison was based on congruency of results, adequacy to group decision, data collection effort and flexibility of judgement, computational complexity and modelling of uncertainty. Copyright © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.