Quantifier guided aggregation using OWA operators

We consider multicriteria aggregation problems where, rather than requiring all the criteria be satisfied, we need only satisfy some portion of the criteria. The proportion of the critera required is specified in terms of a linguistic quantifier such as most. We use a fuzzy set representation of these linguistic quantifiers to obtain decision functions in the form of OWA aggregations. A methodology is suggested for including importances associated with the individual criteria. A procedure for determining the measure of ''orness'' directly from the quantifier is suggested. We introduce an extension of the OWA operators which involves the use of triangular norms. (C) 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.