Application of Improved Best Worst Method (BWM) in Real-World Problems

Dragan Pamučar, Fatih Ecer, Goran Cirovic and Melfi A. Arlasheedi
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Dragan Pamučar: Department of Logistics, Military Academy, University of Defence in Belgrade, Military Academy, Pavla Jurisica Sturma 33, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
Fatih Ecer: Department of Business Administrative, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Afyon Kocatepe University, ANS Campus, 03030 Afyonkarahisar, Turkey
Goran Cirovic: Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Trg Dositeja Obradovica 6, 2100 Novi Sad, Serbia
Melfi A. Arlasheedi: Department of Quantitative Methods, School of Business, King Faisal University, 31982 Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia

Mathematics, 2020, vol. 8, issue 8, 1-19

Abstract: The Best Worst Method (BWM) represents a powerful tool for multi-criteria decision-making and defining criteria weight coefficients. However, while solving real-world problems, there are specific multi-criteria problems where several criteria exert the same influence on decision-making. In such situations, the traditional postulates of the BWM imply the defining of one best criterion and one worst criterion from within a set of observed criteria. In this paper, an improvement of the traditional BWM that eliminates this problem is presented. The improved BWM (BWM-I) offers the possibility for decision-makers to express their preferences even in cases where there is more than one best and worst criterion. The development enables the following: (1) the BWM-I enables us to express experts’ preferences irrespective of the number of the best/worst criteria in a set of evaluation criteria; (2) the application of the BWM-I reduces the possibility of making a mistake while comparing pairs of criteria, which increases the reliability of the results; and (3) the BWM-I is characterized by its flexibility, which is expressed through the possibility of the realistic processing of experts’ preferences irrespective of the number of the criteria that have the same significance and the possibility of the transformation of the BWM-I into the traditional BWM (should there be a unique best/worst criterion). To present the applicability of the BWM-I, it was applied to defining the weight coefficients of the criteria in the field of renewable energy and their ranking.

Keywords: BWM; BWM-I; criteria weights; multi-criteria; renewable energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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