Green supplier evaluation in manufacturing systems: a novel interval-valued hesitant fuzzy group outranking approach

Green supplier selection problem has become a developing concept which could enhance the performance of companies regarding the environmental competencies. In order to deal with the uncertainty of green supplier selection problems, this paper proposes an extended elimination and choice translating reality (ELECTRE) method based on the interval-valued hesitant fuzzy set. In this method, the weight or relative importance of each expert is measured through the proposed interval-valued hesitant fuzzy extended preference selection index method. Also, the importance of each attribute is calculated using the developed maximizing deviation method so that loss of data will be prevented. Afterward, the weights of experts and attributes are used in the proposed interval-valued hesitant fuzzy extended ELECTRE (IVHFE-ELECTRE) method, and in so doing, calculation errors in the proposed algorithm decrease. In the classical approaches, the interval-valued hesitant fuzzy effective outranking matrix may not assist to rank the suppliers. Thus, a novel ranking index is proposed by considering indifference, preference and veto thresholds for each attribute to compare the equivalent ranking of green suppliers. In addition, a case study of the automobile manufacturing industry is used to evaluate the candidate suppliers regarding environmental competencies from the recent literature to verify the proposed IVHFE-ELECTRE method. Also, a comparative analysis based on two outranking methods from the recent literature is elaborated to represent the merits and advantages of the proposed approach. Finally, a sensitivity analysis and quite a few simulation-based experiments are prepared to sensitiveness and validation of the proposed method, respectively.