Mohammed F. Aly , Hazem A. Attia and Ayman M. Mohammed
Design concept is an important wealth-creating activity in companies and infrastructure. However, the process of designing is very complex. Besides, the information required during the conceptual stage is incomplete, imprecise, and fuzzy. Selection of proper materials for a diverse mechanism is one of the hardest tasks in the design and product improvements in various industrial applications. A systematic and efficient approach towards conceptual design and material selection is necessary in order to select the best alternative for a given engineering application. The selection of an optimal design of product and material selection for an engineering design from among many alternatives on the basis of many attributes is a multiple criteria decision making (MADM) problem. This paper proposes an integrated decision-making approach based on fuzzy linguistic variables and geometric mean method integrated with TOPSIS (technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution) framework. The model will help designers and engineers to reach a consensus on design and materials selection for a specific application. Verification of the model is demonstrated with two example problems from the literature and results are compared with other models. Two real life problems are cited in order to demonstrate and validate the effectiveness and flexibility of the model.