Decision–making in a coordinated control structure

Abstract

Industrial decision-making generally involves more than one decision-maker, with regard to the different implied decision criteria on the one hand, and the numerous deployed decision levels on the other hand. Structures of control based on the notion of decision centre (DC) are organised for dealing with these industrial decision-making aspects. Coherence problems, between the different interacting DCs, in their decision-making processes, are thus raised. This article investigates the answers allowed by the MCDM (multicriteria decision-making) field for handling such coherence problems. This aspect is situated within the problem of the group decision, where two or more decision-makers are involved in the decision process. Three types of collaboration between the DCs are highlighted, namely the communication link, the coordination and the cooperation links. A DC preference model, based on the outranking ELECTRE method, is proposed first. This model is then adapted to take into account the previous types of collaboration.