A generalized model for prioritized multicriteria decision making systems

In this paper, we present a generalized model for handling prioritized multicriteria decision making systems. First, we present a new method for handling prioritized multicriteria decision making problems, where the weights of the lower priority criteria of each alternative depend on whether each alternative satisfies the requirements of all the higher priority criteria or not. Then, we also present a generalized prioritized multicriteria decision making method for handling multicriteria decision making problems, where some criteria may have equal priority which can be aggregated by the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator or the weighted averaging method. The proposed methods can overcome the drawbacks of the methods presented in [Yager, R. R. (2004a). Modeling prioritized multicriteria decision making. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics-Part B: Cybernetics, 34(6), 2396-2404]. The proposed methods can handle multicriteria decision making problems in a more intelligent and more flexible manner. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.