MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION MAKING

Multi-criteria decision-making process involves a series of identifying the problems, constructing the preferences, evaluating the alternatives upon different criteria, and determining the best alternative. Multiple-criteria decision making (MCDM) deals with decision situations where the decision maker has conflicting objectives. In typical real-life problems, no ideal alternative exists in the sense of one that is optimal for each objective. Thus, the most important task in multiple criteria decision making is to find a good compromise. This is the alternative that performs best in the eyes of the decision maker, taking into account all objectives simultaneously. Hence, the quality of a compromise depends on the decision makers preferences, which are multidimensional in nature and, at best, partially known. The central question in all approaches in this field is: how can additional information about the decision makers multidimensional preference structure be used in order to support him or her in making a decision? The focus of MCDM lies in fact on decision support, rather than on a theoretical exemplification of rational choice. Multi-Criteria Decision Making is by now a well established paradigm in decision sciences. The key characteristic of this paradigm is that a decision maker does not optimize a single defined objective but aims for the achievement of satisfying levels in the goals or seeks an optimal compromise between several, often conflicting objectives. The general purpose of MCDM is to serve as an aid to thinking and decision making, but not to take the decision. MCDM techniques are capable of dealing with complex problems that are characterized by any mixture of quantitative and qualitative objectives. This is done by breaking the problems into more manageable pieces to allow data and judgments to be brought on the pieces. Next, the techniques reassemble the pieces to present a coherent overall picture to decision makers.