A soft computing method for multi-criteria decision making with dependence and feedback

In this paper, the decision making problems with the dependence and the feedback effects are considered. Although the analytic network/hierarchy process (ANP/AHP) has been proposed to deal with the problems above, several problems make the method impractical. In this paper, we proposed the fuzzy decision maps (FDM), which incorporates the eigenvalue method, the fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM), and the weighting equation, to overcome the problem of preferential independent and the shortcomings of the ANP. In addition, two numerical examples are used to demonstrate the proposed method. On the basis of the numerical results, we can conclude that the proposed method can soundly deal with the decision making problems with the dependence and the feedback effects. 2006 Published by Elsevier Inc.