An Intelligent Approach to Evaluating CAD Software Packages Through Hesitant Fuzzy AHP

Abstract

The evaluation of computer-aided design (CAD) packages among the rising number of alternatives in the market has been a critical process for companies because it directly affects the performance of their design/engineering-related activities in a new product development (NPD) as well as in R&D departments. Moreover, it is seen as an important step towards the computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) environment. On the other hand, the evaluation process of CAD software packages is a multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem in the presence of sets of alternatives and evaluation criteria, which should be solved using one of the MCDM methods in the current literature. Therefore, in this study, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), successfully implemented in both academic research and practices, is used for CAD software selection problem. The method is also used with the group decision-making approach to reach a more reliable solution. Additionally, due to the fact that the crisp pairwise comparison in the traditional AHP method seems to be insufficient and imprecise to capture the right judgments of decision makers (DMs), the hesitant fuzzy linguistic term-sets are integrated with the AHP approach (the hesitant F-AHP) to model the vagueness and uncertainty on judgments of the DMs. This proposed approach is also supported with a user-friendly Excel template that provides an effective tool for companies to evaluate and rank CAD software packages without many tiresome fuzzy comparisons and complex calculations. Moreover, in the paper, a numerical example is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed approach to potential readers and practitioners. In this example, five CAD software options are evaluated based on six criteria by three DMs; and the best alternative is determined.