Multi-criteria decision making in production fields : a structured content analysis and implications for practice

As the complexity of decision-making problems and the competitiveness in which companies find themselves carrying out their activities increase, the need to use tools that can help Decision-Makers (DM) make more informed and more effective choices increases. Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) represents a valid decision support tool capable of simplifying the process of choosing, ranking or sorting the alternatives that characterize the problem. This work aims to investigate with a structured content analysis if MCDMs are used in an extremely complex and competitive sector such as the automotive sector. The work also aims to describe and explore in the existing literature the role that entrepreneurs (our decision-makers) play in the construction of MCDM methods. The results show that MCDMs are widely used in different application areas in the domain of interest and that the decision maker is involved in several phases of construction of the MCDM methods.