A survey on multi-criteria decision making approaches

Over the past few decades, decision-making has gained popularity due to its frequent implications in managerial domains as it enables decision makers to come up with preeminent decisions. This explicit the importance of improved decision making processes given the competitive and dynamic business environment these days. Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) - a well known decision making process is based on the progression of using methods and procedures of multiple conflicting criteria into management planning processes, whereas, Decision Support Systems (DSS) are considered powerful tools for decision-making. MCDM is widely used in conjunction with Decision support systems (DSS) by a large number of decision makers in variety of fields, such as financial analysis, flood risk management, housing evaluation, disaster management and Customer relationship management. Apart from several diversified advantages of using MCDM-DSS architecture, certain issues are also attached to this highly useful decision-making methodology. The main objective of this study is to provide critical evaluation by reviewing and synthesizing the available literature on MCDM-DSS architecture. This study will act as a landmark in providing in-depth knowledge on strength and weaknesses of several models and methodologies reviewed for articulation of this study.

I. INTRODUCTION

With the increased use of web and communication technologies business environments are now more complicated and global [10]. This prevailing situation leads to more complex problems and decision-making set-ups. Therefore, decision-making techniques always captured attention of decision makers who show keen interest in exploring efficient ways [11]. One of the most important steps in decision analysis is to structure decision problems into a formal and manageable format [1]. Traditionally, single-criteria decision-making is used in situations of increasing profits by cutting costs [11].