Selecting new technologies for business critical processes is always a challenging task. Commonly it involves multi-criteria decision making (MCDM). This research is focused on the case of implementing a radio frequency identification (RFID) system in a small hospital. It is assumed that the RFID system will supersede an existing barcode solution, and that the implementation can be done in phases, while using a mixed RFID-barcode-based system. Seven options were identified based on different levels of RFID and barcode usage, from option one (15 percent RFID and 85 percent barcode) to option seven (75 percent RFID and 25 percent barcode). Twelve attributes were used to evaluate each option, including access rate, data accuracy, overall cost, and tracing and tracking. Four MCDM techniques were used. The main focus was on grey-based theory decision making. To validate the results obtained with the grey method, the quantitative strategic planning matrix (QSPM), the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), and simple additive weighting (SAW) approaches were used. The same group of five experts weighted the importance of attributes and scored each option using all four methods.

The author concludes that the grey-based theory method does well in determining the optimal choice among options because the ranking of alternatives by this method provided identical results with the TOPSIS and SAW techniques. Namely, option seven (with the heaviest use of RFID technology) was considered the best, and the rest of the options were given lower ranks according to the diminishing use of RFID. It should be noted that the pattern of ranking testifies to the fact that participating experts assigned relatively low weight to the overall cost attribute: option seven involves maximum implementation of the RFID technology and most likely will turn out to be the most expensive. Also, the QSPM ranking provided significantly different results, placing option seven last.

The intended audience of the paper comprises academics and practitioners working on MCDM methods and those interested in grey theory.