Evaluating the environmental protection strategy of a printed circuit board manufacturer using a T_w fuzzy importance performance analysis with Google Trends

摘要

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are very important materials in consumer electronic products. The process of making PCBs usually uses chemicals, and large quantities of water are needed. PCB manufacturers are devoted to improving the process in order to conform to environmental protection rules and regulations. However, evaluating the performance of environmental protection strategies by quantitative methods is very difficult. Therefore, this study attempts to evaluate the environmental protection strategy of a PCB manufacturer using the novel weakest t-norm (T-w) fuzzy importance-performance analysis with Google Trends (TFIPA-Google). The TFIPA-Google methodology obtain advantages of T-w operations, IPA, and Google Trends, which can handle uncertainty based on a fuzzy matrix of IPA, reduce fuzzy accumulation using the T-w operators, and analyze social media viewpoints using Google Trends. This empirical example based on the TFIPA-Google method shows that the recovered waste material management system should be a priority for PCB manufacturers. Moreover, the TFIPA-Google method can provide more creditable information, based on T-w operations and volume of Google Trends for decision-makers, than a conventional importance-performance analysis (IPA) model. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.