A Comprehensive Multi-Criteria Decision Making Model for Sustainable Material Selection Considering Life Cycle Assessment Method

How to evaluate negative effects of automotive parts on environment in life cycle and select optimal sustainable material are intricate issues. A multi-criteria decision making model combining Techniques for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Information Entropy Method (IEM) for material selection considering life cycle assessment (LCA) method is proposed. This paper starts from establishing LCA technical framework and determining five environmental evaluation criteria. TOPSIS is utilized to rank materials and IEM is employed to assign criteria weights. Then, an automotive door outer panel is taken as an example to select the optimal material from 16 candidates utilizing proposed method. Here, the environmental equivalents of life cycle are calculated by GaBi software from acquisition of raw materials, manufacturing, using to end-of-life. In comparisons with the results of only considering environmental criteria and traditional evaluation criteria, it indicates that LCA is essential for material selection. Therefore, the environmental criteria, materials’ properties, manufacturing techniques, and durability properties are all considered to select the optimal candidate for obtaining parts with superior performance and less environmental impacts. Finally, the ranking results are obtained. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis is executed to prove that the IEM-TOPSIS method has outstanding robustness.