Bulanık AHP ve Bulanık Gri İlişkiler Analizi Yöntemleri ile Kargo Uçak Tipi Seçimi: Bir Türk Havayolu Firmasında Uygulama

Abstract

Globalization and technological developments have affected market conditions in many ways. These developments removed the economic boundaries among countries and gave great opportunities to companies, such as access to cheap labor, raw material and new markets. On the other hand, short product life cycles, delivery times and customization are some of the challenging results of globalization. To meet that challenging market requirements and achieve a competitive advantage, firms ought to operate and use all their transportation modes effectively. Consequently, airline transportation has become more popular in operations since it provides quick and reliable delivery. Due to increasing demand volume in aviation, Turkish air cargo industry has been growing rapidly in last decades. Therefore, airfreight companies are looking to expand their fleet to capitalize on growing in the region. Selecting the most suitable cargo aircraft has a critical importance in terms of the competitiveness. Cargo aircraft selection is a multi-criteria decision-making problem in which multiple conflicting criteria are to be considered simultaneously. The aim of this study is to determine critical criteria set for air cargo plane selection process and rank them according to their importance with using a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method and select the most suitable cargo aircraft using fuzzy grey relational analysis (GIA) method. A real life case study is conducted at a Turkish air cargo company to test the performance of the proposed method.