as the most suitable supplier by the two methods, which is followed by supplier 2 and then by supplier 8 and supplier 7. The
fuzzy ranking principle of Bevilacqua et al. [9] cannot compare suppliers 1, 9, and 10, while the algorithm proposed in this
study provides a complete ranking of all suppliers. This is due to the minimization of the loss of information by using the
fuzzy weighted average method and the higher discriminating power of the fuzzy number ranking method employed in this
paper. Further, Bevilacqua et al. [9] implemented a fuzzy number defuzzification scheme to obtain a complete ranking of the
suppliers, which also identifies supplier 5 as the most appropriate supplier. However, defuzzification approaches suffer from
the limitation of associating each fuzzy quantity with only one real number. Freeling [47] pointed out that by reducing the
whole analysis to a single number, much of the information which has been intentionally kept throughout calculations is
lost. Thus, defuzzification basically contradicts with the key objective of minimizing the loss of information throughout
the analysis.