An intelligent multi-criteria decision support system for systems design

In aerospace systems design, conflicting disciplines and technologies are always involved in the design process. Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods can help Decision Maker (DM) to effectively deal with such situation and make wise design decisions. There are a variety of existing MCDM methods, thus the selection of the most appropriate methods is critical since the use of inappropriate methods is often the cause of misleading design decisions. However, the selection of MCDM methods itself is a complicated MCDM problem that needs to be prudently conducted. In this paper, a hybrid MCDM method is proposed to select the most suitable MCDM method for the problem under consideration. Relative weights are assigned to each evaluation criterion to represent the DM's preference information. The Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) method is used to evaluate the methods and identify the most appropriate one. This MCDM method selection approach is implemented and an intelligent knowledge-based system is developed, consisting of a MCDM library storing the widely used decision making methods and a knowledge base providing the information required for the method selection process. An aircraft selection problem is conducted as a proof of implementation to demonstrate the functionality and effectiveness of the intelligent decision support system.