Decision problems involving various criteria, such as ranking, choosing, and sorting, are frequently complicated. When making a choice, people no longer evaluate simply one aspect (for example, price). Organizations uses many factors in their decision-making process to create long-term partnerships and make sustainable and ecologically responsible decisions. Methods of multi-attribute decision making (MADM) and multi-attribute decision analysis (MADA) have been developed to assist decision makers. MADM approaches serve as tools for achieving a compromise. They are unique in that they put the decision maker at the heart of the process.
Two aspects usually play a crucial role in analyzing and constructing the decision making process in close connection with the decision process itself in any MADM or MADA problem. Here’s a quick rundown of what they’re about:
1. Alternative
By potential action, we mean the thing that is the subject of the decision or the thing that decision making is aimed at. The term “alternative” refers to the situation in which modeling is such that two separate possible actions cannot be implemented simultaneously.
There are a number of predefined, constrained, and independent choices, each of which satisfies a level of the decision maker’s desired attributes. In all cases, A denotes the set of alternatives considered by the decision-making process.
2. Criterion or Attribute
The criterion serves as the foundation for evaluation, and it is separated into two categories: objective and attribute. It is also called Attribute in MADM area. A criterion is a tool for assessing and comparing options based on a point of view that must be well-defined. It is the property that should be considered in an alternative. Each option is associated with a number of relevant attributes, depending on the decision maker’s perspective.
This evaluation must take into account all relevant impacts or attributes related to the point of view under consideration for each alternative. According to this criterion, it is known to as the performance of the corresponding alternative. It is frequently a real number, but in all situations, the set of all possible evaluations to which this criterion can lead must be defined clearly.
Positive attributes are those that have a positive desire from the standpoint of the decision maker; that is, their greater quantity is more favorable to the decision maker. Profit, income, and productivity are common positive characteristics. Negative attributes are those that have a negative desire from the standpoint of the decision maker; that is, their lower value is more favorable to the decision maker. Loss or cost are the most common negative qualities.
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References:
1. Figueira, J., Greco, S., & Ehrgott, M. (Eds.). (2005). Multiple criteria decision analysis: state of the art surveys. Springer.
2. Alinezhad, A., & Khalili, J. (2019). New methods and applications in multiple attribute decision making (MADM) (Vol. 277). Cham: Springer.
