A general multiple attribute decision-making approach for integrating subjective preferences and objective information

A general multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) approach is proposed to integrate subjective preferences and objective information and to assess the relative weights of attributes, where subjective preferences are expressed either by a fuzzy preference relation on decision alternatives or by a pairwise comparison matrix on the relative weights of attributes or by both of them and objective information is expressed by a decision matrix. Three special cases of the approach are investigated, which are the weighted least deviation norm (WLDN), the weighted least-square deviation norm (WLSDN) and the weighted minimax deviation norm (WMDN) approaches. The extension of the general approach to group decision-making and the choice of decision parameters are also discussed. A numerical example is examined to show the applications of the proposed MADM approaches. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.