An Interactive Approach to the Multicriteria Decision Making

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to introduce a solution method for multicriteria problems: The method offers a practical solution by combining judgement with an automatic optimization technique in decision making. This is realised by using the basic ideas behind the method of compromise programming. The "nearly equal" and the "closest" sets of optimal weights of objective functions are established by using the maximum entropy (MEP) and minimum squared deviation principle (MSDP) respectively. The solut1ons in terms of deviation measure from the ideal point are presented to the decisionmaker (OM), and he is only asked to specify the amount by which specific alternatives should exceed the "optimal" alternatives. Such interactive methods allow a re-adjustment of optimal weights, displacement of the ideal point and new pre-decision conflict formation, and leads to a decision in a finite number of iterations. A numerical example is included to illustrate the proposed technique.