In today's world, decision making is an increasingly complex task, especially when multiple different criteria need to be considered. Have you ever been faced with many choices and felt confused when choosing a product or service? At this time, The decision-making aid tool Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) may help you make the best choice.
The TOPSIS method has been developed over the years since it was first developed by Ching-Lai Hwang and Yoon in 1981. It has become a widely used multi-criteria decision analysis method. The core concept is that the optimal choice should be closest to the positive ideal solution (PIS) and farthest from the negative ideal solution (NIS).
TOPSIS evaluates the selected solutions based on the geometric distance between them and the ideal solution, making the comparison more intuitive and reasonable.
To use TOPSIS for effective analysis and decision making, you first need to build an evaluation matrix where each alternative and criterion needs to be formalized. In this process, the scores for each choice are first normalized to make the data relatively comparable. This step is necessary because the parameters of multi-criteria problems often have inconsistent sizes.
The TOPSIS method also allows compensation between different criteria, which means that a poor performance on one criterion can be offset by a good performance on other criteria.
When performing TOPSIS evaluation, the method involves several key steps: first, establishing an evaluation matrix, then normalizing it, then calculating a weighted normal decision matrix, and finally evaluating the best and worst alternatives based on the calculated distances. .
For each criterion, its weight can usually be determined through a category prioritization method and an analytical hierarchy procedure. With this data, we can calculate the distance of each option to the best option and the worst option, and then calculate the similarity based on the ratio of the distances. Finally, the ranking is carried out.
After ranking, we can intuitively see which solutions perform well and which ones need improvement.
In engineering and management, TOPSIS is used in a wide variety of application scenarios, from environmental protection technology to supply chain management, and can even be used in the selection of nuclear power construction. With this approach, decision makers can analyze results in a more rational and scientific manner and make the best choice quickly.
Businesses and organizations that use this approach can not only improve their decision-making capabilities, but also improve work efficiency and lay the foundation for future development. Many online tools, such as DeciGen, Decision Radar, and PyTOPS, make it easy for people who are not familiar with data analysis to use the TOPSIS method.
In summary, TOPSIS is a practical decision-making tool that finds the best choice by balancing multiple criteria. Imagine how much better your life would be if you could use this to help you make choices?