Sensitivity Analysis of Multiple Criteria Decision Making Method Based on the OWA Operator

Abstract

Ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator's weights and orness measure play important roles in the application of the OWA operator to decision-making problems because the decision result may be different owing to the change in either of them. The aim of this paper is to investigate the influence that the change of OWA operator's weights or orness measure exerts on the decision result. We first give the range of the OWA operator's weights to keep the ranking order of alternatives or the optimal alternative unchanged. Then we make a sensitivity analysis to the orness measure to explore the dependency of the decision result on the orness measure. The results of analysis may provide a decision basis according to which decision makers are able to make a reasonable decision. Finally, a practical example is provided to illustrate the proposed sensitivity analysis methods.