OWA-based multi-criteria decision making based on fuzzy methods

Abstract

One of the most important challenges in Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM) problems is how can the optimal weights of the criteria can be determined properly by the decision maker. In the relevant research literature, various methods based on the requirements and assumptions of the problem were introduced to determine the weights of the criteria. In this regard, in particular, the Yager’s OWA operator is one of the most significant and widely used approaches to evaluate the weights of criteria. But there is a drawback, that is, the results of Yager’s OWA operator depend only on the level of decision-maker’s risk and the number of the criteria. Therefore, in this paper, using a multi-objective decision making approach, we try to express this MADM challenge in the form of a generalization of the Yager’s OWA operators and Ahn’s method. One of the advantages of this generalization is that the proposed method uses all the information in the decision matrix compared to the methods proposed by Yager’s OWA operators and the Ahn’s method. The proposed approach is also able to enter various types of preferences considered by the decision maker for the criteria calculations as crisp or fuzzy quantities. Numerical examples and real dataset analysis based on a survey of students’ opinions on teaching activities are provided.