Abstract:
Making an informed decision with regards to a suitable business location or site selection for organizations is becoming challenging for business decision makers globally; and even more challenging in business environment that are saddled with uncertainties. The continues raise of multiple criteria variation of site preferences has also necessitated the application of advanced decision making techniques in handling most business operations. In the light of this, TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) approach to decision making in suitable site selection was used in this study to proffer an ideal location for a residential base camp for a multinational oil company (MNOC). A decision matrix of 16 towns was developed and the criteria for selection of suitable location for residential base camp include availability of land, expansion possibilities, logistics cost, and proximity to oil and gas facilities and natural disaster (flooding). The suitable site location selection was achieved by analyzing the weighted matrix criterion and relative closeness coefficient to the positive ideal solution and the distance from the negative ideal solution. The study found that the positive ideal solution for the site location is Erema represented by code (B3), followed by Amah (B2) and Obiozimini (B12) composed of all best values attainable for the criteria used in the study. The study provided an insight into MCDM for residential base camp location selection for companies when considering suitable location for residential or any other business purposes in the OML 58, Niger Delta, Nigeria.
Machine summary:
za environment (Chu and Lin, 2002); therefore a multi criteria decision making (MCDM) that involves the technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS), which emphasizes that the selected alternatives should have the least distance with positive ideal solution and the most distance with negative ideal solution(Colson and Dorigo, 2004; Ho et al.
, 2011) developed a fuzzy multi-attribute decision making approach for distribution hub location selection problem; and qualitative criteria paradigm has also been utilized that included criteria such as transportation, commercial area, environmental factors, traffic conditions, geographic conditions, hotel characteristics, and operation management variables (MacCarthy and Atthrirawong, 2003; Yong, 2006; Wang and Chang, 2007).
Strength weakness opportunity and treats (SWOT) analysis for business operations evaluation was used to determined suitable location for businesses using criteria such as Costs, labor demographics, infrastructure; and markets forces has also been studied in a fuzzy environment to support the decision-making process for strategic purposes (Lee and Lin, 2008; Marbini and Saatib, 2009; Ying, 2010; Azimi et al.
RESEARCH METHOD Utilizing an appropriate method for the purpose of this study remains a critical issue in the selection of a suitable site for a residential base camp and has also shown to be a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem which include the use of technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) (Hwang and Yoon, 1981; Wang and Elhag, 2006; Yang, 2007; Chen et al.