Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods: A Comparative Study

by Evangelos Triantaphyllou, Ph.D.

NEXT ARE SOME COMMENTS WRITTEN BY PEOPLE WHO READ THIS BOOK

Most of these comments can be found on the Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com websites

• "This reviewer found the book to be fascinating."
  A Book review as published in the Inter'l Journal of Industrial Engineering (Vol. 8, No. 3, page 264, 2001). September 2001
  Reviewer: Dr. Ronald L. Huston, Dept. of Mechanical, Industrial and Nuclear Engineering, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A.
  
  In the Foreword of this book Dr. Hans-Jurgen Zimmerman of Aachen, Germany, states that, in the past, business and industry decisions involved only two entities: 1) the boss and 2) profits. But today decisions involve many people with multiple, and often conflicting, criteria. To cope with this complexity firms are increasingly employing Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods (MCDM). Indeed, in the past two decades MCDM has become one of the fastest growing methods for decision making and problem solving. Nevertheless, there still remains a central issue: Which method is best suited for a given problem and a given set of criteria? This book is intended to enable the reader to answer this question.
  
  MCDM may be regarded as the culmination and use of a multitude of disciplines including probabilistic and statistical analyses, operations research, linear programming, queuing optimization, and fuzzy logic. For a given problem, these methods may suggest a variety of alternative solution procedures. The central task is then to rate these procedures in view of all the criteria. This book (which is Volume 44 in the publisher's list of Applied Optimization titles) is intended to provide the means for comparative evaluation and thus determine-a priori the optimal method.
  
  In his Preface, the author states that the book could be used as a text for senior/graduate courses in decision making in engineering and business school. It is also intended for use by researches and practitioners.
  
  The book itself is divided into fourteen chapters spanning approximately 300 pages. After a brief introductory chapter the second chapter provides an outline of the most common MCDM methods. The third chapter discusses means for quantifying data. The next four chapters then discuss various weighting and comparison methods. The eighth chapter, which is the principal chapter of the book, presents a sensitivity analyis of MCDM methods. Both theoretical and empirical procedures are discussed. The remaining chapters then present a critical comparison of various MCMM methods and procedures including a discussion of fuzzy logic in decision making.
  
  In short, the author attempts to answer the question: What decision making method should be used to choose the best decision making method?
  
  This reviewer found the book to be fascinating. There is something useful in it for everyone involved in decision making. It should be of interest to everyone in the intended audience (students, researchers, and practitioners). Purchase is recommended accordingly and also by industrial and academic libraries.


• A comprehensive study on the AHP and other popular MCDM methods, August 9, 2001
  Reviewer: A reader from Manchester, UK
  
  This is a very good book for people who are involved in evaluating different alternatives and each alternative has its own strengths and weaknesses. It is also a very good reference for students and researchers who are studying/working in the area of decision analysis. It is especially useful for people who are interested in trying to find out which MCDM method is the best and who have used or intend to use the AHP method in their work or research. It has extensive and intensive coverage on the AHP method for ranking alternatives, other pairwise comparison methods for extracting weights, their shortcomings and improvement, and their comparisons with other popular MCDM methods. The discussions on the ranking abnormalities of the AHP method and its revised versions are very informative. The comparisons are supported using numerous numerical examples, the conclusions are convincing, and the contents easy to understand.


• A must-read for practioners and researchers. Excellent!, July 11, 2001
  Reviewer: A reader from New York, NY USA
  
  I read this book with great interest. I am a Faculty Member at the New York University. This book is very clear to the point. I liked very much the in-depth analyses of many real-life MCDM issues and also the many numerical examples. The computational results are very thorough and revealing. The first book of its kind. An Excellent piece of work!!!


• Comments by Dr. E. Triantaphyllou, email: trianta@lsu.edu, May 31, 2001
  Reviewer: Dr. Evangelos Triantaphyllou, the Author (see more about me) from Baton Rouge, LA, USA
  
  Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) has been one of the fastest growing problem areas during at least the last two decades. Thus, due to the importance of this field, many MCDM methods have been proposed. Ironically, often these methods contradict each other when they are posed to solve the same decision problem. This, in turn, has increased the confusion in MCDM theory and practice.
  
  As Professor H.-J. Zimmermann from Aachen, Germany, remarked in the foreword for this book, this is exactly where this book has its focus and why it is that important: Rather than suggesting another MCDM method without any convincing justification, this book concentrates on the best known and most frequently used methods, compares them extensively and makes the reader aware of quite a number of "abnormalities" of some of the methods of which users are often not conscious. The book also considers very critically the most touchy points in solving real MCDM problems, namely, the quantification of qualitative data, how to derive relative weights of importance from ratio and difference comparisons, and also how to perform a sensitivity analysis with many MCDM methods.
  
  This book provides a unique perspective into the core of MCDM methods and practice. Many theoretical and empirical analyses are presented and are complementary to each other. This allows the reader to gain a deep theoretical and practical insight into the topics covered in this book. In addition, the author offers at the end of each chapter and at the end of the book suggestions for further research. More information on this book can be found in the personal web site of the author which is located at the Louisiana State University in the U.S.A.


• A nice book!, May 12, 2001
  Reviewer: A reader from Los Angeles, California, USA
  
  I enjoyed reading it! Nice exposition of the various subjects.

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