An automatic approach to reaching consensus in multiple attribute group decision making

In this work, we consider the problem of consensus of multiple attribute group decision making, and develop an automatic approach to reaching consensus among group opinions. In the process of group decision making, each expert provides his/her preferences over the alternatives with respect to each attribute, and constructs an individual decision matrix. The developed approach first aggregates these individual decision matrices into a group decision matrix by using the additive weighted aggregation (AWA) operator, and then establishes a convergent iterative algorithm to gain a consentaneous group decision matrix. Then based on the consentaneous group decision matrix, the approach utilizes the AWA operator to derive the overall attribute values of alternatives, by which the most desirable alternative can be found out. Finally, we detailedly expound the implementation process of the approach with a practical example. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.