BUILDING A MULTICRITERIA DECISION MODEL FOR SOLVING A TECHNICAL SCHOOL LOCATION PROBLEM WITH THE FITRADEOFF METHOD

ABSTRACT

Facility location-related decision problems pose a significant challenge for managers due to the multiple and conflicting factors involved. Moreover, incorrect decisions can lead to substantial impacts on companies' long-term strategic planning, resulting in losses for the business. This paper deals with a facility location problem in the educational sector in the northeast region of Brazil, which concerns the definition of the best location to place a private sector technical school, considering multiple objectives throughout a multicriteria approach. The decision-making process is structured based on a 9-step multicriteria model, and the preference elicitation phase is aided by the Flexible and Interactive Tradeoff (FITradeoff) method, using partial information provided by the decision-maker (DM). In the application presented in this paper, preference modeling is conducted considering the combination of two preference elicitation paradigms in the FITradeoff decision process: elicitation by decomposition and holistic evaluations, throughout a flexible approach. The DM’s preferences are elicited interactively, by means of a Decision Support System (DSS). At each interaction, the information given by the DM acts as constraints for a linear programming problem (LPP) model, which is computed in order to verify the potential optimality of each alternative. At the end of the elicitation process, a sensitivity analysis is performed so as to verify the robustness of the results obtained. Insights on the preference modeling paradigms combination with potential advantages for the decision process are also discussed in this paper.

Keywords:
facility location; technical school location problem; multicriteria decision-making; preference modeling; FITradeoff method