## 1 Introduction
For this reason, cement production globally contributes to environmental protection, and the member states of the European Union have become an important strategic partner for governments in the fight for a cleaner environment [7; 12; 13]. Cement production is realized in industrial plants, mainly within the construction industry. In addition to the production process, material handling processes are important, and their efficiency directly affects the productivity of the production process and the industrial plant [14; 15; 16]. In industrial plants, the problem of selecting material handling technology is most often analyzed from the perspective of technological design and refers to the process of developing and implementing technological solutions that support production processes, improve efficiency, and enable the optimal utilization of resources [17; 18]. This paper is focused on the selection of technologies for handling bulk materials, particularly cement. Bulk material handling is challenging, primarily due to its physical and chemical characteristics, including its wide range of forms and granulations, density and volume, viscosity, and impact on the environment and the health of employees. Additionally, the handling of bulk materials has been insufficiently investigated in research and practical analyses, which was another important motive for carrying out this study [14; 15; 16; 17]. The processes for handling bulk materials are characterized by certain limitations due to their physical and chemical characteristics. These limitations refer to the potential impact of the material on the environment or technology, and vice versa, including moisture sensitivity, abrasiveness, tackiness, temperature sensitivity, cohesion, hygroscopicity, etc. [18; 16]. These limitations could restrict the selection of material handling technology and exclude certain types of technology due to mismatches between the characteristics of the technology and the physical and chemical material characteristics. Accordingly, material handling optimization is required to increase the efficiency of the industrial plant. This paper analyzed the intralogistics activity of the industrial plant of a factory operating in Serbia, the main activity of which is the production of construction materials. Cement is important for our analysis due to its role in material production for the construction industry in general. With cement being present in over 60% of total industrial factory production activities, its role is crucial for the economic development of countries. Cement production requires energy-intensive processes, and the costs of these processes make up almost 15% of the total energy consumption in the industry. The production of one ton of cement requires an average of 3.4 GJ of heat energy and 110 KWh of electricity. In addition, the production of one ton of cement results in the emission of between 0.73 and 0.99 tons of CO2 [5; 6; 9]. Because the plant under analysis delivers more than 75% of goods in containers, the process of loading containers and preparation for delivery is particularly challenging. Accordingly, the management of the factory under study includes the deployment of new technologies for the realization of this process. The as-is analysis determined that the optimization of the loading containers process would significantly improve the performance of the factory. Four alternative solutions were proposed for the researched case study: pneumatic conveyors, belt conveyors, elevators, and robotic conveyors. The proposed alternative solutions were analyzed based on nine criteria grouped into three categories: technical-technological, economic, and ecological-social. Given the intricacies of this multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) challenge, a novel hybrid model that integrates the Fuzzy SWARA and ADAM methods is introduced in this paper. This combination stands out as a key contribution of our paper.