Employing meta-heuristics and fuzzy ranking functions for direct solution of fuzzy mathematical programs

Primary objective of this study is to present how fuzzy mathematical programmingmodels can be solved by employing metaheuristic algorithms and ranking methodsfor fuzzy numbers without requiring a transformation into a crisp model. Up to datevarious solution approaches are proposed to solve different fuzzy mathematicalprogramming models. The main difficulty in fuzzy mathematical programming is tosolve fuzzy models using the existing solution algorithms. In the existingapproaches to overcome this problem the crisp equivalent of the fuzzy models areobtained. In this study, a direct solution method is proposed to solve fuzzymathematical programming problems with different fuzzy parameters and fuzzymathematical programming problems with fuzzy decision variables. In the proposeddirect solution method, ranking methods for fuzzy numbers and metaheuristicalgorithms are used. The effectiveness of the proposed direct solution method isproved with different examples.Keywords: fuzzy mathematical programming, fuzzy decision variables, rankingmethods for fuzzy numbers, classification of fuzzy mathematical programmingmodels