Creating an Index of Manufacturing Climates in the US: An Application of Multi-level Fuzzy Rule-Based System

摘要

When industrial corporations look for locations to expand or relocate operations they will look to either in-house locations experts or consulting firms for assistance in identifying potential sites. Many consulting firms have used location indexes to rank states according to their attractiveness to manufacturers and use these indexes as a quick means for comparing the relative standing for potential sites. One such index was developed by the accounting firm of Grant Thornton and published annually. The index utilized information related to state and local government fiscal policies, state regulated employment costs, labor costs, and productivity of services. The index scales each of the criteria measures and calculates a weighted average of all scaled measures. Weighted averages are not conducive for evaluating the interactions between factors or for making different judgments based on the context of a situation. Fuzzy rule-based systems have been shown to be effective tools for performing evaluations and rankings in the areas of state financial and economic attributes. This paper illustrates how fuzzy rule-based systems can be utilized to incorporate the necessary expert judgment into ranking business climates. The resulting rankings are compared to those produced by weighted averages. In addition, the paper illustrates the system''s ability to decompose the final rankings and identify critical factors in each case