A Novel Extension of the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution Method with Objective Criteria Weights for Group Decision Making with Interval Numbers

This paper presents an extension of the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method with objective criteria weights for Group Decision Making (GDM) with Interval Numbers (INs). The proposed method is an alternative to popular and often used methods that aggregate the decision matrices provided by the decision makers (DMs) into a single group matrix, which is the basis for determining objective criteria weights and ranking the alternatives. It does not use an aggregation operator, but a transformation of the decision matrices into criteria matrices, in the case of determining objective criteria weights, and into alternative matrices, in the case of the ranking of alternatives. This ensures that all the decision makers' evaluations are taken into account instead of their certain average. The numerical example shows the ease of use of the proposed method, which can be implemented into common data analysis software such as Excel.