MULTICRITERIA DECISION-MAKING IN GERMAN AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY USING FUZZY-LOGIC

In recent years, fuzzy logic technologies have been widely applied to control applications in engineering, where they are now considered an enabling technology for intelligent control systems. Fuzzy logic expedites the design of complex systems by allowing heuristic control strategies to be formulated by natural-language rules rather than mathematical models. Hence, the essence of fuzzy logic is its ability to put engineering expertise right into an algorithm. The domain of such a technology is not limited to control engineering, it can also be applied to incorporate complex decision making and the analysis of numerical data into non-control systems. This paper covers such an application, realized at Mercedes-Benz in Germany. For the optimization of the design process of truck components, such as gear boxes, the 'maturity' of a current component development needs to be evaluated. The objective is to reduce the amount of existing data of the development project to a single parameter, describing the overall maturity of the design.