The application of Fuzzy Delphi Method and Fuzzy AHP in lubricant regenerative technology selection

Due to the funding scale and complexity of lubricant regenerative technology, the selection of recycling technology and policy for waste lubricant oil can be viewed as a multiple-attribute decision process that is normally made by a review committee with experts from academia, industry, and the government. This study aims to provide a systematic approach towards the technology selection, in which two phase procedures are proposed. The first stage utilizes Fuzzy Delphi Method to obtain the critical factors of the regenerative technologies by interviewing the foregoing experts. In the second stage, Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process is applied to find the importance degree of each criterion as the measurable indices of the regenerative technologies. This study considers eight kinds of regenerative technologies which have already been widely used, and establishes a ranking model that provides decision makers to assessing the prior order of regenerative technologies. The empirical study indicates that the ‘‘Proper scale” is the most important evaluation criterion considered in overall experts. The demonstration of how the prior order of regenerative technologies changes under various domains of experts is addressed as well. 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.