Problem structuring methods as intervention tools: Reflections from their use with multi-organisational teams

Problem structuring methods (PSMs), also known as soft OR approaches, are most commonly employed with teams formed by members who tend to operate within an overall framework of authority and accountability, and most of whom have the ‘power to act’ on their recommendations. However, other PSM users include teams whose members are drawn from different organisational settings to work on a problem of common interest. The multi-organisational nature of such multi-organisational teams (MOTs) adds further complexity to the PSM modelling and facilitation processes by increasing the potential for conflict regarding the problem. In addition, members of MOTs tend not to operate within an overall framework of authority and accountability and, therefore, do not necessarily have full authority to commit themselves to their joint agreements. This paper reports on the design and application of a PSM-based methodology with three such groups, within the context of a multi-organisational collaboration in the UK construction industry. The paper reflects on the apparent success of the intervention, discusses the appropriateness of PSMs in this particular intervention context, as well as the generalisibility of the findings to other PSMs and/or multi-organisational contexts. Directions for the research and practice of PSMs with MOTs are also presented.     

Two ways to handle dependent uncertainties in multi-criteria decision problems

We consider multi-criteria group decision-making problems, where the decision makers (DMs) want to identify their most preferred alternative(s) based on uncertain or inaccurate criteria measurements. In many real-life problems the uncertainties may be dependent. In this paper, we focus on multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) problems where the criteria and their uncertainties are computed using a stochastic simulation model. The model is based on decision variables and stochastic parameters with given distributions. The simulation model determines for the criteria a joint probability distribution, which quantifies the uncertainties and their dependencies. We present and compare two methods for treating the uncertainty and dependency information within the SMAA-2 multi-criteria decision aid method. The first method applies directly the discrete sample generated by the simulation model. The second method is based on using a multivariate Gaussian distribution. We demonstrate the methods using a decision support model for a retailer operating in the deregulated European electricity market.     

Multi-criteria decision support and evaluation of strategies for nuclear remediation management

Environmental emergency situations can differ in many ways, for instance according to their causes and the dimension of their impacts. Yet, they share the characteristic of sudden onset and the necessity for a coherent and effective emergency management. In this paper we consider decision support in the event of a nuclear or radiological accident in Europe. RODOS, an acronym for real-time on-line decision support system, is a decision support system designed to provide support from the early phases through to the medium and long-term phases. This work highlights the role of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) within RODOS in ensuring the transparency of decision processes within emergency and remediation management. Special emphasis is placed on the evaluation of alternative remediation or countermeasure strategies using the multi-criteria decision support tool Web-HIPRE in scenario focused decision making workshops involving different stakeholder and expert groups. Decision support is enhanced by a module that generates natural language explanations to facilitate the understanding of the evaluation process, therefore contributing to the direct involvement of the decision makers, with the aim of increasing their confidence in the results of the analyses carried out, forming an audit trail for the decision making process and improving the acceptability of the system as a whole.     

A Framework for the Analysis of Error in Conjunctive,Multi-Criteria,Satisficing Decision Processes*

This paper examines the impact of certain types of error on ad hoc, unstructured decision making that incorporates a satisficing strategy in a multi-criteria context using the conjunctive rule. The impacts of error in evaluation and of error in minimal or satisficing levels are systematically modelled for each of the decision criteria. Error functions, analytical expressions, and procedures are developed to obtain information such as the likelihood of correct decision making in the presence of evaluation and minimal criteria level error. These are applied to a specific research design, which is then analyzed. This highlights certain features of decision making in a satisficing context, such as the importance of keeping the number of decision criteria to a minimum. The results yield various insights, some of which confirm information obtained from previous analyses. A major advantage of the framework presented is that it can provide quantitative measurements which support ideas previously couched in qualitative terms only. Although the framework is applied in the context of decision making that uses the conjunctive rule in the case of multiple criteria, other satisficing strategies can be accommodated as well.     

A hybrid approach to configure eco-efficient supply chains under consideration of performance and risk aspects

Formal models that support multi-criteria decision making represent a strongly growing area in sustainable supply chain management research. However, uncertainties and risks are seldom considered in quantitative models for green supply chain (SC) design. The paper at hand suggests a hybrid approach to configure an eco-efficient SC for a new product under consideration of economic and environmental risks. Discrete-event simulation is applied to assess the financial, operational and environmental performance of different SC configuration options while the value-at-risk concept is adapted to evaluate related SC risks. The analytic hierarchy process is employed to solve the resulting multi-criteria decision problem of choosing the best option. The approach is illustrated at a case example of a fast moving consumer goods manufacturer.     

A Sensitivity Analysis Approach for Some Deterministic Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods*

Often, data in multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problems are imprecise and changeable. Therefore, an important step in many applications of MCDM is to perform a sensitivity analysis on the input data. This paper presents a methodology for performing a sensitivity analysis on the weights on the decision criteria and the performance values of the alternatives expressed in terms of the decision criteria. The proposed methodology is demonstrated on three widely used decision methods. These methods are the weighted sum model (WSM), the weighted product model (WPM), and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). This paper formalizes a number of important issues on sensitivity analysis and derives some critical theoretical results. Also, a number of illustrative examples and computational experiments further illustrate the application of the proposed methodology.     

Assigning machines to incomparable maintenance strategies with ELECTRE-SORT

The increasing demand on productivity and quality requires machines to be constantly available for production. It is therefore crucial to develop an adequate maintenance programme. To facilitate this, several criteria need to be considered, such as: downtime, maintenance frequency, spare parts costs, bottleneck impacts, etc. In the literature, a strategy is selected for each machine with a multi-criteria decision choice method. However, before making an informed decision, each strategy needs to be tested on each machine and then their performances evaluated with a multicriteria decision method. This is time-consuming, inefficient and often unfeasible. As machines׳ performances are usually systematically collected by industries, a much more practical approach is to assign machines to a maintenance strategy. This is referred to as a sorting problem. However, this problem cannot be solved by existing multi-criteria sorting methods because maintenance strategies cannot always be completely ordered: incomparable strategies exist. Recently, a Decision Making Grid was proposed to allocate machines to incomparable strategies. However, this technique can only be applied to problems with two criteria. In this paper, we have developed ELECTRE-SORT, a new sorting method that is able to consider an unlimited number of criteria in order to assign machines to incomparable strategies. A case study illustrates that ELECTRE-SORT provides more precise and flexible maintenance strategies than the Decision Making Grid.     

社会化商务中基于经验及推荐的消费者感知信任模糊融合模型

社会化商务中消费者根据个人经验和他人推荐建立感知信任,是一种典型的信任融合问题。其中,相似性决定了过往个人经验和他人推荐对消费者感知信任的影响力,是信任融合问题中的主导因素。信任融合起源于计算机网络安全领域,国内外学者对此进行了大量研究,但在社会化商务背景下,消费者感知信任的模糊性和感知信任形成的多源性问题对信任融合模型提出新的挑战,带来相似性与感知信任度量难及多源信任融合难问题。针对上述问题,以基于案例的决策理论（CBDT）为基础构建由相似性引导的模型框架,结合直觉模糊集和多属性决策方法构建感知信任模糊融合模型。该模型将决策者的经验与他人推荐相融合,将多种方法相结合优势互补,对完善信任融合方法体系有贡献,对多学科交叉有意义,为传统电子商务平台制定精准营销策略提供新思路,为社会化商务商家预测消费者感知信任提供新的度量方法。     

DNMA: A double normalization-based multiple aggregation method for multi-expert multi-criteria decision making

This paper develops a comprehensive algorithm for multi-expert multi-criteria decision making problems considering quantitative and qualitative criteria in forms of benefit, cost or target types. We focus on using probabilistic linguistic term sets to express the qualitative evaluations due to their excellence in expressing complex individual and collective linguistic assessments. Firstly, we develop a target-based linear normalization technique and a target-based vector normalization technique. A weight adjustment method is proposed to achieve the tradeoff between criteria after normalization. Given that the two target-based normalization techniques have different advantages, we then propose a ranking method, which consists three subordinate models, based on these two target-based normalization approaches and three aggregation techniques. Reliable results of a multi-expert multi-criteria decision making problem are determined by integrating the subordinate utility values and the ranks of alternatives. The proposed method is implemented to solve the green enterprise ranking problems and the excavation scheme selection problem for shallow buried tunnels, respectively. The advantages of the proposed method are emphasized through comparative analyses with other ranking methods.     

Floating ideas—An experiment in enhancing hypergames with maps

Within the OR community, an increasing emphasis is being placed on developing approaches to tackle complex, ‘messy’ decision problems. The work described in this paper arose out of the premise that it would be desirable to integrate ideas from a number of different approaches of this type. Specifically, the paper describes one experimental attempt to link methods for modelling conflict situations (the analysis of options and hypergames) with the cognitive mapping approach to eliciting subjective data. Taking a personally-owned decision problem, mapping was used to enrich the game-based approaches by providing a way of documenting the argumentation underlying the models used. Though difficult to generalise from, the experiment not only suggested that such an extension is likely to be an improvement, but also highlighted some deficiencies in the existing versions of the game-based approaches themselves.     

Power planning in ICT infrastructure: A multi-criteria operational performance evaluation approach

It is critical for information and communications technology (ICT) companies to carry our effective power planning, in order to support the growing number of services they provide, and this traditionally relies on the tacit knowledge and experience of senior staff. The loss of such domain knowledge resulting from the retirement of staff is an important issue for organizations such as Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), the largest ICT operator in Taiwan. This study thus develops a systematic power planning model using a multi-criteria operational performance evaluation. A group version of the fuzzy repertory grid and fuzzy TOPSIS approaches is applied to elicit a set of evaluation criteria that senior staff agree on, and then the priorities of the telecom rooms are evaluated against this. In addition, a new factor, reflecting the attitudes of the decision makers with respect to the degree of strictness, is defined to determine the superiority and inferiority of each alternative compared to the others. Furthermore, a novel decision aggregation strategy regarding the degree of variation among decision makers is proposed, and a quantitative assessment is carried out to analyze its impact on the ranking results in an objective manner. The proposed model may help ICT organizations to more effectively manage their power resources, and thus obtain competitive advantages.     

Ranking irregularities when evaluating alternatives by using some ELECTRE methods

The ELECTRE II and III methods enjoy a wide acceptance in solving multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems. Research results in this paper reveal that there are some compelling reasons to doubt the correctness of the proposed rankings when the ELECTRE II and III methods are used. In a typical test we first used these methods to determine the best alternative for a given MCDM problem. Next, we randomly replaced a non-optimal alternative by a worse one and repeated the calculations without changing any of the other data. Our computational tests revealed that sometimes the ELECTRE II and III methods might change the indication of the best alternative. We treat such phenomena as rank reversals. Although such ranking irregularities are well known for the additive variants of the AHP method, it is the very first time that they are reported to occur when the ELECTRE methods are used. These two methods are also evaluated in terms of two other ranking tests and they failed them as well. Two real-life cases are described to demonstrate the occurrence of rank reversals with the ELECTRE II and III methods. Based on the three test criteria presented in this paper, some computational experiments on randomly generated decision problems were executed to test the performance of the ELECTRE II and III methods and an examination of some real-life case studies are also discussed. The results of these examinations show that the rates of the three types of ranking irregularities were rather significant in both the simulated decision problems and the real-life cases studied in this paper.     

When do Public Managers Imitate Each Other? Mimetic Decision Making in Contracting Decisions of Danish Municipalities

Using organizational new institutional theory, this paper explores a core mechanism underlying contracting decisions in public organizations. A central proposition of this branch of institutional theory is that uncertainty leads to organizational isomorphism. The present study investigates this proposition by asking: When does perceived uncertainty lead public managers to imitative behavior in contracting out decisions? Contrary to most previous studies, we apply an individual level approach and relate different types of perceived uncertainty of decision makers to mimetic decision making. We define mimetic decision making as when decision makers deliberately obtain information about other organizations in order to possibly imitate them. In a survey of Danish municipal managers facing important and complex contracting decisions, we test our hypotheses about three types of perceived uncertainty and mimetic decision making. The results show that technological uncertainty is strongly related to mimetic decision making among public managers. However, we do not find significant results for either volume uncertainty or performance uncertainty. The paper illustrates how uncertainty, through mimetic decision making, is connected to organizational isomorphism. It further highlights that future studies should pay attention to the multidimensionality of uncertainty and its consequences.     

基于前景理论的多阶段随机多准则决策方法

研究一种基于动态参考点的多阶段随机多准则决策方法。考虑多阶段决策过程中决策者的风险偏好,建立了基于前景理论的多阶段随机多准则决策分析框架,提出了一种基于阶段发展特征的动态参考点设置方法;构建准则权重的目标规划模型,结合阶段参考点动态变化的特征测算各阶段备选方案的综合前景值;设计方案综合前景值的范围估算模型,以反映决策风险对评价结果的影响;案例研究验证了上述方法的可行性和实际效果。     

An application of the AHP in vendor selection of a telecommunications system

Vendor selection of a telecommunications system is an important problem to a telecommunications company as the telecommunications system is a long-term investment for the company and the success of telecommunications services is directly affected by the vendor selection decision. Furthermore, the vendor selection of a telecommunications system is a complex multi-person, multi-criteria decision problem. The group decision-making process can be improved by a systematic and logical approach to assess priorities based on the inputs of several people from different functional areas within the company. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) can be very useful in involving several decision-makers with different conflicting objectives to arrive at a consensus decision. In this paper, an AHP-based model is formulated and applied to a real case study to examine its feasibility in selecting a vendor for a telecommunications system. The use of the proposed model indicates that it can be applied to improve the group decision making in selecting a vendor that satisfies customer specifications. Also, it is found that the decision process is systematic and that using the proposed AHP model can reduce the time taken to select a vendor.     

基于一致性度量的概率模糊语言多属性群决策方法

人们通常习惯用语言术语来表达他们的偏好，因此概率型语言术语集（Probabilistic Linguistic Term Set，PLTS）在决策过程中有着十分重要的作用。目前PLTS的研究刚刚起步，有关PLTS的相关研究没有关注到一致性度量的问题，对于PLTS的多属性群决策方法有待进一步研究。首先，给出了一种新的PLTS的集结方法，并且在已有的PLTS可能度公式的基础上，构建了PLTS的相似度量方法，在此基础上，进一步提出了基于PLTS一致性度量的多属性群决策方法。该方法在各决策者权重未知的情况下，考虑到各决策者之间的一致性。首先，定义PLTS的一致性度量公式，确定决策者权重；并根据PLTS的集结方法，集结各决策者的评价信息；最后，利用可能度公式对PLTS进行排序。通过案例分析验证了该方法的可行性和优越性。     

基于Vague集包含度的模糊多目标决策

将Vague集的包含度应用于模糊条件下的多目标决策问题。首先,定义vague集的包含度,利用正常蕴涵算子给出Vague包含度的一系列具体公式,并通过定义Vague集的基数将模糊集的部分包含度公式推广到Vague集。然后给出基于Vague集包含度的模糊多目标决策方法。最后,通过例子阐明方法的有效性。     

Application of the multi-criteria analysis method Electre III for the optimisation of decentralised energy systems

The optimisation of decentralised energy systems has to integrate a series of factors, by implementing an approach based on interdisciplinary comprehension. There are technical, financial, environmental and social conditions that determine the selection and dimensioning of energy systems, particularly if these aim at covering the demand of remote regions by utilising renewable energy sources. Such a study requests the overall consideration of the local geological, morphological and climatic conditions, the capacities of the networks, and also the inclusion of the economic and social limitations, an approach that leads to a number of alternative solutions. The application of multi-criteria analysis can integrate the various aspects into a uniform evaluation procedure. This paper discusses the results of a study on determining the achievable penetration of renewable energy sources into an insular system for the purpose of electricity generation. The multi-criteria analysis method Electre III was implemented for this purpose. The research relies on data produced within the framework of the SEDEPIC project, financed by the ALTENER II/DG XVII programme.     

Evaluating airline competitiveness using multiattribute decision making

This paper presents an objective approach to the evaluation of airline competitiveness. The evaluation problem is formulated as a multiattribute decision making model and solved by three widely used methods (the simple additive weighting method, the weighted product method and the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution) based on multiattribute value theory. A new empirical validation procedure is developed to deal with the inconsistency problem of evaluation outcomes produced by the three methods. The procedure selects the evaluation outcome which has a minimum expected value loss. An empirical study on Taiwan's five major domestic airlines is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach. To measure and compare overall competitiveness of the airlines, five competitiveness dimensions and their associated objective performance measures on both efficiency and effectiveness are identified. The result of empirical validation for the three methods suggests the use of the simple additive weighting method. The evaluation outcome helps an airline identify its competitive advantages relative to its competitors. The objective approach presented is particularly applicable when subjective judgements on performance ratings and attribute weights are not reliable, or suitable decision makers are not available.