Multi-criteria Decision Making Methods

Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) has been one of the fastest growing problem areas in many disciplines. The central problem is how to evaluate a set of alternatives in terms of a number of criteria. Although this problem is very relevant in practice, there are few methods available and their quality is hard to determine. Thus, the question Which is the best method for a given problem?' has become one of the most important and challenging ones. This is exactly what this book has as its focus and why it is important. The author extensively compares, both theoretically and empirically, real-life MCDM issues and makes the reader aware of quite a number of surprisingabnormalities' with some of these methods. What makes this book so valuable and different is that even though the analyses are rigorous, the results can be understood even by the non-specialist. Audience: Researchers, practitioners, and students; it can be used as a textbook for senior undergraduate or graduate courses in business and engineering.

Contenu

List of Figures. List of Tables. Foreword. Preface. Acknowledgments. 1. Introduction to Multi-Criteria Decision Making. 2. Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods. 3. Quantification of Qualitative Data for MCDM Problems. 4. Deriving Relative Weights from Ratio Comparisons. 5. Deriving Relative Weights from Difference Comparisons. 6. A Decomposition Approach for Evaluating Relative Weights Derived from Comparisons. 7. Reduction of Pairwise Comparisons Via a Duality Approach. 8. A Sensitivity Analysis Approach for MCDM Methods. 9. Evaluation of Methods for Processing a Decision Matrix and Some Cases of Ranking Abnormalities. 10. A Computational Evaluation of the Original and the Revised AHP. 11. More Cases of Ranking Abnormalities When Some MCDM Methods Are Used. 12. Fuzzy Sets and Their Operations. 13. Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making. 14. Conclusions and Discussion for Future Research. References. Subject Index. Author Index. About the Author.