Title: Multiple Criteria Decision Making: Some Thoughts

Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) has been an active area that has attracted much attention in recent years. There have been many conferences and publications, and there are now quite a few MCDM societies. An overview of MCDM is presented as is an approach for a simple method of decision making, based on spread sheet techniques.

Biography:
Stanley Zionts is Alumni Professor of Decision Support Systems, Department of Management Science and Systems, School of Management, State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNYAB), Buffalo, New York 14260. He is also an adjunct professor of Industrial Engineering. He has been on the faculty at SUNYAB since 1967 and has served the school in various leadership roles. He served as faculty chairman of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) at the school during the 1994-95 academic year. Dr. Zionts has an M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial Administration as well as a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, all from Carnegie Mellon University. He has worked with the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management in Brussels, Belgium, the Ford Foundation in India, and the U.S. Steel Corporation. In addition to his long-term positions in India (one-and-a-half years) and Belgium (two years), he has spent over a year cumulatively in China lecturing, doing research, and teaching in the SUNYAB School of Management's M. B. A. programs. He has also taught in the School^�s Motorola MBA program in Beijing, China. He spent the fall 1991 semester teaching in the SUNYAB program in Montpellier, France and he has taught in the School's MBA program in Riga, Latvia. He has also lectured in most western European countries, as well as several eastern European and Asian countries, and South Africa. He is fluent in French, and speaks a little Mandarin Chinese. His areas of research include multiple criteria decision making, decision support systems, and mathematical programming. Prof. Zionts is the author/editor of several books and proceedings and over one hundred articles in journals, books, and proceedings. He has organized or co-organized and generated financial support for five international meetings and has assisted in the organization of and the generation of financial support for many other meetings. He currently serves as co-editor of Journal of Multicriteria Decision Analysis, and as associate editor of Management Science, Naval Research Logistics and Group Decision and Negotiation journals. He has also served as co-editor of special issues of Management Science and Naval Research Logistics. He has served on and chaired various ORSA/TIMS Committees and serves as a visiting lecturer in the ORSA/TIMS Visiting Lecturer Program. Though he has generally taught in the management science and management information systems areas, he has also taught courses in strategic management. He was honored by the publication of a Festschrift on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. (Essays in Decision Making, A Volume in Honour of Stanley Zionts, published by Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1997, co-edited by Mark H. Karwan, Jaap Spronk, and Jyrki Wallenius). He is an avid skier. A certified member of the Professional Ski Instructors of America, Inc., he is a part-time ski instructor at the Holiday Valley Ski Area in Ellicottville, New York.