| Multi-criteria decision analysis is a major topic of research in the field of construction engineering and management. During the construction process, hundreds of decisions are made at different stages, and with multiple stakeholders. This includes selecting an alternative location for construction, choosing materials, assemblies for construction, developing a project plan, estimating budget and supervising project from beginning to completion. The selection of the optimum site for a prefabrication plant is one of the most important decisions that significantly influence the success or failure of a project. However, very limited research is available on the proper site selection criteria for establishing a prefabrication plant.This research focuses on the site selection problem for prefabrication plant. At first, a list of site selection criteria is established based on an intensive literature review. Next, an mteractive multi-criteria decision analysis tool-TODIM method is employed to evaluate the site selection criteria against the available alternative candidate sites. Then Fuzzy TODIM method is applied in the study to prevent the effects of decision makers'prejudice and bias in the ranking of alternatives. In Fuzzy TODIM method, triangular fuzzy numbers (TFN) are used for expressing the linguistic variables for the attribute values. After that some MATLAB simulation scenarios are designed to implement the algorithms of TODIM and Fuzzy TODIM. The simulation result shows that the achieved outcomes are consistent and identical in both methods. Later a sensitivity analysis is carried out for both methods which proved the consistency of the results. Finally a comparison of the findings of TODIM and Fuzzy TODIM method is discussed. Both of the methods are proved to be efficient decision making tool to evaluate the site selection problem for prefabrication plants and they can aid operations managers to take important investment decisions. |
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