Bid/no-bid decision-making – a fuzzy linguistic approach

Bid/no-bid decision-making is a critical activity for a contractor. Limited by both the nature of and the competition for bid opportunities, bid/no-bid decision is associated with uncertainty and complexity. Because subjective considerations such as nature, competition, value of the bid opportunity, resource capabilities, and the reputation of the company are relevant to the bid/no-bid decision, a fuzzy logic approach is adopted. In this approach assessments are described subjectively in linguistic terms, while screening criteria are weighted by their corresponding importance using fuzzy values. As an illustration, a practical example for evaluating a bid opportunity of an international co-development commercial airplane project in Taiwan is cited, which shows how this method can provide the analyst with more convincing and reliable results and cost saving for the company.