A Treatise on Reconnoitering the Suitability of Fuzzy MARCOS for Assessment of Conceptual Designs

Abstract

The development of an equipment starts from an effective design activity. The concept selection process is an activity that is entailed in the design stage, and its relevance in the design process cannot be overemphasized because it informs the choice of optimal conceptual design from a set of alternative designs. Hence, there is a need to accrue efforts to the concept selection process because of its importance. This article presents the identification of optimal conceptual design as a multicriteria decision-making model by assessing the suitability of fuzzy Measurement Alternatives and Ranking according to COmpromise Solution (MARCOS). The fuzzy MARCOS model was developed to access four alternative conceptual designs of briquetting machines considering eight design features with several sub-features. The results obtained from the decision analysis showed that the fuzzy MARCOS model was able to rank the designs based on their performance and the final values of the overall utility function. The overall utility function is based on the utility degree of the conceptual design alternatives in terms of the best and worst designs identified by the model. The utility degree created a platform for comparison on how the design alternatives varied from the best and worst designs. The results obtained from the MARCOS method were validated using the TOPSIS method and modified TOPSIS method, and the results obtained showed that the MARCOS method is in conformity with the validation results.

Keywords

• design concept selection
• fuzzy MARCOS
• design process
• multi-criteria decision making
• briquetting machine