Selecting textile products by manufacturing companies under uncertainty

Textile manufacturing companies are interested in selecting the best fibers and fabrics from their marketing properties and production characteristics. Many firms often face scenarios where the relative significance of each fabric characteristic can be hardly measured, and then the managers' decisions on fabric choice are made under uncertainty. To help determine a ranking of products intended for selection, an uncertainty model for cautious managers is proposed. A case study is developed dealing with seven fabric properties (tensile strength, shrinkage, pilling, density, fastness to light, fabric weight, and flame retardance) and four production characteristics (market price of materials, period of delivery, density, and required manufacturing processes), the opportunity set consisting of 132 fabrics.