Choosing Technology by Using a Combined ANP and DEMATEL in Cellulose Industry (A Case Study: Tissue Paper Manufacturing Technologies)

Choosing a proper technology is one of the most important challenges in establishment and expanding of an industrial unit. In the cellulose industry, various technologies can be used and each of them includes advantages and disadvantages. In this case, technology selection is very critical, therefore the cellulose industry is considered as the case study in this research. The ANP method is one of the latest amongst the multi-criteria decision making methods and the technology selection is also a multi-criteria decision making challenge. In the first step of the research, the expert’s opinions are used to detect the alternatives. In the next stage, a model is chosen from the previous. In order to determine the level of dependency of each criterion on the considered industry, criteria are sifted by Shanon Entropy technique. In the next step, another questionnaire is created by means of the current DEMATEL technique, in order to detect the expert’s opinion about interior dependency of different. The last questionnaires are developed for the pairwise comparison between model elements and for comparing the alternatives. Finally, the resulted data are imported to Super Decision software in order to evaluate the alternatives and consequently, the most proper technology is selected.