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A novel multicriteria decision making (MCDM) approach for precise decision making under a fuzzy environment

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Abstract

The existing crisp and fuzzy multicriteria decision making (MCDM) methods exhibit consistency, complexity, and reliability issues. To address these challenges, we propose a new MCDM method called fuzzy technique for best–worst analysis (FTBWA). In FTBWA, a decision-maker (DM) first identifies a set of criteria and then determines the best–worst criteria. Next, the DM performs the fuzzy reference comparisons between the best-to-other (BtO) and the others-to-worst (OtW) criteria using the linguistic expressions. The process results in fuzzy BtO and fuzzy OtW vectors, which are then defuzzified to obtain quantifiable values. Afterward, a maximin problem is built and solved to obtain the weights of criteria and alternatives. The best alternative can be selected based on the final score obtained by aggregating the weights of different sets of criteria and alternatives. Further, we propose a consistency ratio to check the reliability of the results of FTBWA. To verify the practicality and consistency of FTBWA, we perform two illustrative case studies. Moreover, we perform a comprehensive analysis considering a comparative analysis, rank reversal analysis, and support for group decision making. From the results, we observe that FTBWA outperforms existing fuzzy/crisp MCDM methods.

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Funding

We would gratefully acknowledge the support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) as the research program under [Grant Number 71671025, 71421001].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China

    Abid Hussain & Jin Chun

  2. Lahore High Court, Shahra-e-Quaid-e-Azam, Lahore, Pakistan

    Abid Hussain

  3. Islamabad, Pakistan

    Maria Khan

Authors
  1. Abid Hussain
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  2. Jin Chun
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  3. Maria Khan
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Correspondence to Abid Hussain.

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Hussain, A., Chun, J. & Khan, M. A novel multicriteria decision making (MCDM) approach for precise decision making under a fuzzy environment. Soft Comput 25, 5645–5661 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-020-05561-9

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