Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and TOPSIS to Select Welding Process at Storage Tank in the Food and Beverage Industry

Selection of the most appropriate welding process usually depends on the experiences of a welder or follows the common welding process in similar companies. However, this approach ignores typically many criteria that can be affecting the suitable welding process selection. Therefore, knowledge automation through knowledge-based systems will significantly improve the decision-making process. The purpose of this research propose integrated data envelopment analysis (DEA) and technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) approach for investigating the best welding process for storage tank in the food and beverage industry. The proposed approach compares each decision-making units (DMUs) with two virtual DMUs called ideal DMU (IDMU) and anti-ideal DMU (ADMU). Furthermore, the final result is determined by the relative closeness (RC) index. The proposed approach is used to give a ranking for six welding processes that are commonly used in the storage tank manufacturing.