Determination of the technological value of cotton fibre: a comparative study of the traditional and multiple-criteria decision-making approaches

This paper presents a comparative study of the methods used to determine the technological value or overall quality of cotton fibre. Three existing methods, namely the fibre quality index (FQI), the spinning consistency index (SCI) and the premium-discount index (PDI) have been considered, and a new method has been proposed based on a multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique. The efficacy of these methods was determined by conducting a rank correlation analysis between the technological values of cotton and yarn strength. It was found that the rank correlation differs widely for the three existing methods. The proposed method of MCDM (multiplicative AHP) could enhance the correlation between the technological value of cotton and yarn strength.