A Decision-Making Model for Professional Drivers Selection: A Hybridized Fuzzy–AROMAN–Fuller Approach

Abstract

Professional drivers play a crucial role in many businesses and the lives of people. They are responsible for transferring people and goods between distant points, enabling safe and efficient flows. The road traffic death rate is from 8.3 to 27.5 per 100,000 inhabitants in the countries globally. Because professional drivers spend a significant amount of time on the road, their appropriate selection may contribute to general traffic safety. In addition, an adequate selection of candidates significantly impacts the financial costs of the employing company. However, the recruitment procedure is a very complex task where multiple criteria should be considered. By its nature, this is a typical multi-criteria decision-making problem. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to contribute to the methodological, as well as to the professional field. Considering the professional, we propose a decision-making tool in the procedure of professional driver selection. There are several methodological contributions. By reviewing the literature, we identified 14 criteria for candidate selection. In the proposed model, by using expert opinion and implementing DEMATEL and Fuller’s pairwise comparisons, we ranked these criteria and determined the seven most important for further calculation procedure. Here, we introduced an original approach for measuring the reliability of obtained answers. Then, to rank the candidates, the fuzzy AROMAN approach is applied for the first time in the literature. The input data were obtained in the form of a survey, where the experts evaluated the importance of criteria and their interrelation. We used MS Excel and MATLAB for data processing. An additional methodological contribution of this study is an advancement of the AROMAN method by the proposal of an algorithm for the calculation of parameter λ used in the final ranking formula. To illustrate the applicability of the proposed model, a case study is provided. Based on the results, we can conclude that the new methodological approaches can be successfully used in the procedure of professional driver selection, as well as in solving other multi-criteria decision-making problems.