Decisions with conflicting criteria abound across organizations and in our personal life. When selecting a new business branch, for instance, we would want to choose a place in close proximity to our customers. At the same time, we want low invested capital and low inventories which imply fewer branch alternatives. In our persnal lives, when settling for a new home, families seek to balance safety, quality of life, quality of education for children, distance to work, etc. These type of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problems may present us with one of two options:
 
(1) finite and known feasible alternatives (i.e. constraints are implicit) or
 
(2) infinite and unknown alternatives (i.e. constraints are explicit and given by a set of linear and non linear inequalities or equations).

In the first case we have what is known as Multiple Criteria Selection Problems (MCSPs) and, in the second case, what is known as Multiple Criteria Mathematical Programming (MCMP).
 
Let’s review some of the methods included in these two categories (for a deep dive please directly refer to Ravindran & Warsing (2013)):