Development of Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Group

Decision Support System Software

• Muhammad ‘Ammar bin Awang

• Dr. Sundar Raju Raviraja
What is multi-criteria decision support
system (MCDSS)?

• A system that helps with making decisions under

multiple, but conflicting criteria.

• Provides a systematic procedure to help decision

makers choose the most desirable and satisfactory
alternative under uncertain situations.

• Example: Making decision to choose a new car.

Why we need MCDSS?
• A decision can be made according to the
decision maker’s preference. But if the
problem becomes more complicated,
computer aid is necessary.

• Relying on factual knowledge alone is not

always sufficient in making a decision.

• Value judgments, depending on the role and

the goals of each decision maker, are among
the critical issues requiring attention.
 What is wrong with MCDSS?

• Most MCDSS only explored on numeric values but

ignore qualitative inputs or natural language which
are often used by decision makers to express
thinking.

• The decision maker needs this (qualitative inputs) to

assert the preferences.

• This might limit the capability of the system.

 Can we improve the traditional
MCDSS?
• To maximize the usability of MCDSS, we must
include the qualitative inputs or natural
language to the system.

• But when using natural language as a label

for a set, the boundaries within the objects
which belong to the set become fuzzy.

• Therefore, fuzzy sets theory and natural

language is used to deal with this problem
Have fuzzy MCDSS been developed before?

• In 2009, Jasleen Kaur Sethi developed Fuzzy Logic based Decision Maker
System for choosing cars using MATLAB.
• The idea of this system is user can input the scale that is how good or bad
a car is according to different parameters. The scale can range for 0 to 5
with 0 for poor, 1 for average and so on.
• Next a fuzzy set containing the parameters and their scale of importance is
made. A score specifying the scale of importance is given to each
parameter for all cars in that category. Then implication process is done.
• In, implication, union of the complemented fuzzy set and the scale of
importance entered by the user is performed that is maximum value is
taken.
• Finally to get the output, the intersection operation for all the cars in that
category is performed that is a min function is applied across all relevant
members. The car with the maximum score becomes the best appropriate
car for the user.
• But Sethi’s system only involved one decision maker
only.

• In real world, sometimes when it comes to make a

decision, it involve more than one decision maker.

• In that situation, Sethi’s algorithm will not work.

• Also in 2009, during 22nd International Conference On
Industrial, Engineering and Other Applications of Applied
Intelligent Systems in Taiwan, Yeh et al. present a paper about
multi-criteria group decision support for information systems
project selection.

• This system involved multiple decision makers and each

decision maker have ‘power’ to determine the relative
importance of each evaluation criteria.

• This is perfect!
• But Yeh et al. system only focused on evaluating and
selecting IS projects for development needs.

• We cannot use their system to help us making

decision under different situation.
What we are going to do?
• We want to design and create a fuzzy MCDSS software
that can be useful within broad scope of problem-
solving scenarios, towards “universal DSS”.

• Using Yeh et al. algorithm, we will create a fuzzy

MCDSS software that can be used for multi-purpose
decision making processes.

• Users can determine the main and sub evaluation

criteria, their weights, and evaluate the performance
according to the number of decision makers and
evaluation weights of criteria.