Minimum Distance Method (MDM) for group judgment aggregations

A new aggregation method-Minimum Distance Method (MDMJ)-was developed to support the group decision process and to help decision makers achieve consensus under the framework of AHP. MDM employs the general distance concept, and is proven to be very appealing to the compromise nature of a group decision making. It preserves all characteristics of the functional equations approach proposed by Aczel and Saaty (1987). MDM is based on a goal programming model, which is easy to solve by using optimization software such as LINDO. Using the goal programming model, MDM provides the weighted membership capability. Sensitivity analysis can be performed to investigate the effect of varying the decision makers' relative importance in terms of weights in the goal programming model. Sensitivity analysis also allows us to make robust decisions.