Aggregating decision information into interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers for heterogeneous multi-attribute group decision making

Multi-attribute group decision making (MAGDM) has attracted more and more attention in many fields. Correspondingly, a number of usable methods have been proposed for various MAGDM problems, nevertheless, very few research focus on the aggregation techniques of intuitionistic fuzzy information. The aim of this paper is to aggregate decision information into interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers (IVIFNs) to solve heterogeneous MAGDM problem in which the decision information involves real numbers, interval numbers, triangular fuzzy numbers (TFNs) and trapezoidal fuzzy numbers (TrFNs). There are three issues being addressed in this paper. The first is to propose a new general method to aggregate the attribute value vector into IVIFNs under heterogeneous MAGDM environment utilizing the relative closeness in technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The second is to construct a multiple objective intuitionistic fuzzy programming model to determine the attribute weights. Borrowing the results of the former two issues, the last is to present a new method to solve heterogeneous MAGDM problem. A comparison analysis with existing method is conducted to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method. Two examples are provided to verify the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed method. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.