Single-Valued Neutrosophic DEMATEL for Segregating Types of Criteria: A Case of Subcontractors’ Selection

The decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) has been used to solve numerous multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) problems, where real numbers are utilised in defining linguistic variables. Although the DEMATEL has shown its success in solving many decision-making problems, researchers have not fully understood how the DEMATEL works on non-real-number linguistic variables. Recent discovery of single-valued neutrosophic sets (SVNSs) can offer a new method to solve decision-making problems, where three memberships of SVNSs are used to define experts’ linguistic judgment. This paper aims to propose a novel MCDM method, where SVNSs and the DEMATEL are fully utilised. Different from the DEMATEL, which directly utilises real numbers, this proposed method introduces SVNSs to better deal with truth, indeterminacy, and falsity in solving MCDM problem. As an application of the proposed method, subcontractors’ selection problem is investigated using the proposed method, where four types of criteria are developed. A group of experts were invited to provide opinions and linguistic judgment regarding the degree of influence between criteria of subcontractors’ selection. The linguistic evaluations defined in SVNSs were computed using the eight-step procedures of the proposed method. Based on the degree of influence, the computational results successfully segregated all ten criteria into four types, in which two to three criteria are grouped in each type. The results also suggest that “Experience” and “Quality” are the most influential criteria in subcontractors’ selection. The segregation based on degree of influence would be greatly significant for the practical implementation of the subcontractors’ selection