Purpose – The purpose of this paper is the application of a tool to assist the multi-criteria decision-making process for selecting an asset for a company in the metallurgical industry which manufactures metal parts for diverse industries. Design/methodology/approach – This investment, complex due to the commitment of resources it requires, has been made with the assistance of decision-making methodologies, specifically versions I and IV of the ELECTRE method. Findings – This model of multi-criteria decision making has been chosen over other models because it offers the possibility of including technical and economic decisions so they can be analyzed simultaneously, therefore the decision is not based solely on financial aspects. Many companies base their decisions exclusively on financial returns, however in this case it is also appropriate to include the technical parameters, since the asset being replaced is the most important asset of the company. Originality/value – Applying version I of the methodology, the optimal technical configuration of the asset will be analyzed based on the features requirements, all of which are among options available in the market. Once a subset of technically and economically viable alternatives has been defined, version IV will be applied and a ranking of the alternatives from the best to the worst will be obtained and, based on this ranking, the final decision will be made.

For entrepreneurs, decision making is present right from the start. The decision-making process in business has received extensive academic attention in recent decades. One of the first-order strategic decisions for an entrepreneur is where to locate the new business. The emergence of the multi-criteria decision analysis paradigm allowed several criteria to be considered when making a decision, which surpassed the previous single criterion decision paradigm. The Electre methodology pioneered this new paradigm and, among the evolutions of the Electre method, version IV is perhaps the least used. This paper aims to show a methodology to aid decision making for entrepreneurs, in particular the location decision. Thus, this study shows an example, an empirical application of Electre IV for locating a business, with the ultimate goal of providing companies with a ranking of alternatives to consider, such that it provides a competitive advantage if the choice agrees with the first positions of the final ranking.

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