Can weighting methods provide similar results in MCDA problems? Selection of energetic materials study case

Multi-criteria methods are an important element used in developing decision support systems aimed at helping the decision-maker choose the optimal decision. It is necessary to define weights for the criteria for which appropriate methods are used. However, it is important to check whether the results obtained by these methods are correlated with each other. In this paper, the energy-efficient material selection problem addressed by Bhomwik and Gangwar was used, where TOPSIS and entropy methods were used by researchers. COMET, VIKOR, PROMETHEE II, SPOTIS and COPRAS methods were selected in combination with entropy, equal weights and standard deviation methods to investigate the correlation with other weighting methods and MCDA methods, which provided a comprehensive results comparison. It was noted that although there were similarities between the rankings, they were not significant enough for the weighting methods to be used equally without changes in the final rankings occurring. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://crativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of KES International.

Automated summary

This study explores the application of multi-criteria methods in energy efficient material selection, comparing the results of different weighting methods. The findings indicate that while there are similarities in the rankings, the weighting methods do not align completely.