The objective of this conference was to foster a healthy exchange of ideas and experience in the domain of multiple criteria problem solving. This conference was an outgrowth of an earlier conference I organized with Herve Thiriez at CESA, Jouy-en-Josas, France in 1975 during my stay at the European Institute in Brussels. When I re joined the State University of New York at Buffalo that year, I be gan to search for potential sponsors for this conference. Approxi mately one year later when the prospects began to look promising, I contacted several individuals to act as an informal coordinating committee for the conference. I wanted to avoid biasing the con ference completely to my way of thinking! The members of this committee were Jim Dyer, Peter Fishburn, Ralph Kee. ney, Bernard Roy (Universite de Paris IX Dauphine who was unable to participate in the conference), and Milan Zeleny. Though the committee did not meet, per se, their inputs regarding format, possible participants, number of participants, length of the conference, and so on were of great value to me in planning and organizing the conference. I wish to acknowledge the contributions of this group. We were most fortunate in obtaining the financial support of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, Brussels ·(one of the sponsors of the Jouy-en-Josas conference), the Office of Naval Research, and the State University of New York at Buffalo.

It was a great honor and privilege to organize the Tenth International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making at Taipei, Taiwan, July 19-24, 1992. Accompanying this unique honor and privilege there was a series of complex, challenging problems. Each of them involved multiple criteria, fuzziness, uncertainty, unknown yet dynamic changes. The problem sometimes cost us sleep because we wanted to do the very best job, but in reality it seemed to be impossible. The following are the main goals of the organization committee: (i) inviting all prominent and distinguished MCDM scholars around the world to participate in the conference and to present their up-to-date research results, (ii) providing financial aid and hospitality so that each invited speaker can have free room and board at a five star hotel, (iii) creating an environment so that all participants can freely exchange their ideas, and build friendships around the world. Due to the enthusiastic participation of the prominent scholars, the generous support of the Taiwan government, universities, the Industrial leaders and nonprofit foundations, and the active problem solving attitude and doing of the organizational committee and the Habitual Domain (HD) club, the conference was a great success.

The field of multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA), also termed multiple criteria decision aid, or multiple criteria decision making (MCDM), has developed rapidly over the past quarter century and in the process a number of divergent schools of thought have emerged. This can make it difficult for a new entrant into the field to develop a comprehensive appreciation of the range of tools and approaches which are available to assist decision makers in dealing with the ever-present difficulties of seeking compromise or consensus between conflicting inter ests and goals, i.e. the "multiple criteria". The diversity of philosophies and models makes it equally difficult for potential users of MCDA, i.e. management scientists and/or decision makers facing problems involving conflicting goals, to gain a clear understanding of which methodologies are appropriate to their particular context. Our intention in writing this book has been to provide a compre hensive yet widely accessible overview of the main streams of thought within MCDA. We aim to provide readers with sufficient awareness of the underlying philosophies and theories, understanding of the practi cal details of the methods, and insight into practice to enable them to implement any of the approaches in an informed manner. As the title of the book indicates, our emphasis is on developing an integrated view of MCDA, which we perceive to incorporate both integration of differ ent schools of thought within MCDA, and integration of MCDA with broader management theory, science and practice.

This monograph is intended for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course of engineering and management science. as well as for persons in business. industry. military or in any field. who want an introductory and a capsule look into the methods of group decision making under multiple criteria. This is a sequel to our previous works entitled "Multiple Objective Decision Making--Methods and Applications (No. 164 of the Lecture Notes). and "Multiple Attribute Decision Making--Methods and Applications (No. 186 of the Lecture Notes). Moving from a single decision maker (the consideration of Lecture Notes 164 and 186) to a multiple decision maker setting introduces a great deal of complexity into the analysis. The problem is no longer the selection of the most preferred alternative among the nondominated solutions according to one individual's (single decision maker's) preference structure. The analysis is extended to account for the conflicts among different interest groups who have different objectives. goals. and so forth. Group decision making under multiple criteria includes such diverse and interconnected fields as preference analysis. utility theory. social choice theory. committee decision theory. theory of voting. game theory. expert evaluation analysis. aggregation of qualitative factors. economic equilibrium theory. etc; these are simplified and systematically classified for beginners. This work is to provide readers with a capsule look into the existing methods. their characteristics. and applicability in the complexity of group decision making.

Multi-criteria Decision Analysis for Supporting the Selection of Engineering Materials in Product Design, Second Edition, provides readers with tactics they can use to optimally select materials to satisfy complex design problems when they are faced with the vast range of materials available. Current approaches to materials selection range from the use of intuition and experience, to more formalized computer-based methods, such as electronic databases with search engines to facilitate the materials selection process. Recently, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods have been applied to materials selection, demonstrating significant capability for tackling complex design problems. This book describes the rapidly growing field of MCDM and its application to materials selection. It aids readers in producing successful designs by improving the decision-making process. This new edition updates and expands previous key topics, including new chapters on materials selection in the context of design problem-solving and multiple objective decision-making, also presenting a significant amount of additional case studies that will aid in the learning process. Describes the advantages of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) in the materials selection process through different case studies Presents a methodology for multi-objective material design optimization that employs Design of Experiments coupled with Finite Element Analysis Supplements existing quantitative methods of materials selection by allowing simultaneous consideration of design attributes, component configurations, and types of material Provides a case study for simultaneous materials selection and geometrical optimization processes