Designing Appropriate Technology Selection Model (Case study: Fars Province Gas Company)

Technology is a vital part of operations in any organization; however, the selection of appropriate technology is a challenging decision. This paper aims to develop a model for assessing the level of appropriateness of technologies for users of the Fars Province Gas Company. To do this, a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods was used to create and apply the necessary instrument. In this research, we first extracted technology selection criteria from national and international scientific documents. Secondly, the criteria were sifted, then the unnecessary criteria were removed using the content validity ratio method. Finally, the remained 33 criteria were classified into three categories: financial, strategic, and technological. To weigh the dimensions and criteria, the R-SWARA method was used, and it discovered that the technical dimension has the highest weight and encapsulates more criteria than other dimensions. The validity of the model was approved using experts’ ideas. Then, three alternative technologies for inspection and testing of the pipeline welding used by Fars Province Gas Company were evaluated using the designed model, and the rating of each technology was determined by the proposed model. The results reveal that the most appropriate technology is Ultrasonic Testing Technology, with a mean score of 13.2 out of 20.