A Fuzzy Group Prioritization Method for Deriving Weights and its Software Implementation

Abstract

Several Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods involve pairwise comparisons to obtain the preferences of decision makers (DMs). This paper proposes a fuzzy group prioritization method for deriving group priorities/weights from fuzzy pairwise comparison matrices. The proposed method extends the Fuzzy Preferences Programming Method (FPP) by considering the different importance weights of multiple DMs. The elements of the group pairwise comparison matrices are presented as fuzzy numbers rather than exact numerical values, in order to model the uncertainty and imprecision in the DMs’ judgments. Unlike the known fuzzy prioritization techniques, the proposed method is able to derive crisp weights from incomplete and fuzzy set of comparison judgments and does not require additional aggregation procedures. A prototype of a decision tool is developed to assist DMs to implement the proposed method for solving fuzzy group prioritization problems in MATLAB. Detailed numerical examples are used to illustrate the proposed approach.