What is Integral Quality Indicator

The Simon’s model of the decision-making process includes the phase of choosing among alternatives or options, designed for solving the given problem. Usually an option dominates in some of the properties and is less suitable according to others. Making a rational decision in choosing an option means to balance between different properties. There are two principle strategies in performing this task: • To evaluate every option on the whole set of properties, and • To apply a procedure to extract the best (the most suitable) one. Integration of information associated with the multiple properties of competitive options into a single measure is presented and discussed. Options could be goods to purchase, list of products for manufacturing, suppliers, services, technologies, and even candidates for a given position. The common in all such cases are: • The decision maker has to assign a value to every option in the competing group by comparing it against its alternatives—the other members of the same group. Further, we shall call this value integral quality indicator of the option. • Options in the group are described with a common list of properties or characteristics, which we will call further single quality indicators of the option. Different measures, designed to integrate the information provided by single indicators, are presented and discussed.