Interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy symmetric point criterion-based MULTIMOORA method for sustainable recycling partner selection in SMEs

Abstract The need and strategy of eco-economy encourage enterprises to reach sustainability by employing sustainable supply chain management. Contrary to the numerous literatures focusing on green design and sustainability practices, this paper presents sustainable recycling partner (SRP) assessment with economic, environmental and social pillars. To propose an integrated framework for SRP selection in small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs), interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set (IVIFS)-based model is applied to deal with the vague, uncertain and qualitative information. Inspired by these topics, we propose IVIF-improved Dombi weighted averaging and IVIF-improved Dombi weighted geometric operators to aggregate the decision-making expert’s preferences and discuss some sophisticated characteristics of developed aggregation operators. Further, we establish an integrated weighting model by combining the IVIF-symmetric point of criterion (IVIF-SPC) and IVIF-rank sum (IVIF-RS) tools. Then, the classical multi-attribute multi-objective optimization by ratio analysis (MULTIMOORA) model has been extended using the proposed divergence measure and improved Dombi operators for treating multi-criteria decision analysis problems on IVIFS setting. To explore the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed model, a case study of SRP selection in SMEs is conducted. Further, the sensitivity investigation and comparative discussion are presented to check the stability and robustness of the presented technique.