A systematic review on multi-criteria group decision-making methods based on weights: analysis and classification scheme

Interest in group decision-making (GDM) has been increasing prominently over the last decade. Access to global databases, sophisticated sensors which can obtain multiple inputs or complex problems requiring opinions from several experts have driven interest in data aggregation. Consequently, the field has been widely studied from several viewpoints and multiple approaches have been proposed. Nevertheless, there is a lack of general framework. Moreover, this problem is exacerbated in the case of experts’ weighting methods, one of the most widely-used techniques to deal with multiple source aggregation. This lack of general classification scheme, or a guide to assist expert knowledge, leads to ambiguity or misreading for readers, who may be overwhelmed by the large amount of unclassified information currently available. To invert this situation, a general GDM framework is presented which divides and classifies all data aggregation techniques, focusing on and expanding the classification of experts’ weighting methods in terms of analysis type by carrying out an in-depth literature review. Results are not only classified but analysed and discussed regarding multiple characteristics, such as MCDMs in which they are applied, type of data used, ideal solutions considered or when they are applied. Furthermore, general requirements supplement this analysis such as initial influence, or component division considerations. As a result, this paper provides not only a general classification scheme and a detailed analysis of experts’ weighting methods but also a road map for researchers working on GDM topics or a guide for experts who use these methods. Furthermore, six significant contributions for future research pathways are provided in the conclusions.The first author acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Universities [grant number FPU18/01471]. The second and third author wish to recognize their support from the Serra Hunter program. Finally, this work was supported by the Catalan agency AGAUR through its research group support program (2017SGR00227). This research is part of the R&D project IAQ4EDU, reference no. PID2020-117366RB-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/ 501100011033.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Supplier evaluation and selection in fuzzy environments: a review of MADM approaches

In past years, the multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) approaches have been extensively applied by researchers to the supplier evaluation and selection problem. Many of these studies were performed in an uncertain environment described by fuzzy sets. This study provides a review of applications of MADM approaches for evaluation and selection of suppliers in a fuzzy environment. To this aim, a total of 339 publications were examined, including papers in peer-reviewed journals and reputable conferences and also some book chapters over the period of 2001 to 2016. These publications were extracted from many online databases and classified in some categories and subcategories according to the MADM approaches, and then they were analysed based on the frequency of approaches, number of citations, year of publication, country of origin and publishing journals. The results of this study show that the AHP and TOPSIS methods are the most popular approaches. Moreover, China and Taiwan are the top countries in terms of number of publications and number of citations, respectively. The top three journals with highest number of publications were: Expert Systems with Applications, International Journal of Production Research and The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology

VIKOR Technique:A Systematic Review of the State of the Art Literature on Methodologies and Applications

The main objective of this paper is to present a systematic review of the VlseKriterijuska Optimizacija I Komoromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method in several application areas such as sustainability and renewable energy. This study reviewed a total of 176 papers, published in 2004 to 2015, from 83 high-ranking journals; most of which were related to Operational Research, Management Sciences, decision making, sustainability and renewable energy and were extracted from the “Web of Science and Scopus” databases. Papers were classified into 15 main application areas. Furthermore, papers were categorized based on the nationalities of authors, dates of publications, techniques and methods, type of studies, the names of the journals and studies purposes. The results of this study indicated that more papers on VIKOR technique were published in 2013 than in any other year. In addition, 13 papers were published about sustainability and renewable energy fields. Furthermore, VIKOR and fuzzy VIKOR methods, had the first rank in use. Additionally, the Journal of Expert Systems with Applications was the most significant journal in this study, with 27 publications on the topic. Finally, Taiwan had the first rank from 22 nationalities which used VIKOR technique