MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION MAKING MODELS BY APPLYING THE TOPSIS METHOD TO CRISP AND INTERVAL DATA.

In this paper, one of the multi-criteria models in making decision, a Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), is described. Some of the advantages of TOPSIS methods are: simplicity, rationality, comprehensibility, good computational efficiency and ability to measure the relative performance for each alternative in a simple mathematical form. The paper has a review character. It systematises the knowledge within the scope of techniques of decision taking with the use of the TOPSIS method. Simple numerical examples that reference real situations show practical applications of different aspects of this method. The paper is organized as follows. The Introduction presents a short overview of the decision making steps as well as MCDM techniques. Section 1 presents matrix representation of the MCDM problem. Section 2 describes the TOPSIS procedure for crisp data, and Section 3 for interval data. The TOPSIS algorithm in group decision environment in the case of crisp and interval data is also presented. In Section 4 the problem of qualitative data in TOPSIS model is discussed. The numerical examples showing applications of those techniques in the negotiation process are presented in Section 5. Finally, conclusions and some concluding remarks are made in last section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]