Analysis of production and location decisions by means of multi-criteria analysis

Abstract

During the last few years economists and operations researchers have paid much attention to multi-criteria analysis as a tool in modern decision-making. The basic feature of multi-criteria analysis is the fact that a wide variety of relevant decision aspects can be taken into account without a necessity to translate all these aspects in monetary terms. This article will give a brief survey of these new methods in both a quantitative and in a qualitative sense. After this survey the relevance of multi-criteria analysis for entrepreneurial decisions in the field of production and investments will be exposed. The analysis will be illustrated by means of two examples of entrepreneurial decision-problems, which have been solved by means of multi-criteria analysis.