RIM-reference ideal method in multicriteria decision making

Multiple criteria decision making methods provide a useful tool to support decision making. To date, different methods have been developed using different approaches. In particular, the conception used by the TOPSIS and VIKOR methods identifies the best alternative based on the positive and the negative ideal solutions. In this paper, a new method based on the concept of ideal solution is presented as a possible variant of the aforementioned. However, in our case these values can vary between the maximum value and the minimum value; this does not occur in the VIKOR and TOPSIS methods in which these values are the extreme values. Moreover, our method is characterized to be independent of the type of data. Moreover, RIM does not present Rank Reversal, an aspect that is not present in other multiple criteria decision making methods. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.