Thank you for your question, but sorting and classification are not the same, therefore, before giving you an answer about SIMUS I need to know what you interpret as sorting

Classification is the general term; however, ‘sorting requires the addition of user preferences to the classification and that there should be consistency within the preference’ (Greco et al, 2001)

I don’t really know if SIMUS can perform sorting, let me investigate, however, according to the above definition and considering that it requires user’s preferences, which are absent in SIMUS, I am not sure, and I don’t want to mislead you.

There are indeed user’s preferences in SIMUS but as post-result not ante-result, and this is the reason for my doubt

In addition as number 4) you mention Integer Programming as a MCDM that can solve sorting, and that is not entirely true, because Linear Programming can also do that, as well as Goal Programming that you mention

Dear Seyed Mohamad Mohsen Emamat

If I understood what you are looking for, this publication might be the answer into your question.

Article State of art surveys of overviews on MCDM/MADM methods

B.R.,

Ari

I going to guess that by classification you mean trying to quantify the value of different attributes pertaining to your decision criteria so as to be able to rank their contribution to your decision - I'm also assuming by sorting you basically mean ranking alternatives according to the extent that they satisfy your objectives. If that is the case, I recommend to explore Keeney's approach to value focused thinking. VFT is implemented through a decision hierarchy and looks similar to AHP, but differs significantly in how alternatives are evaluated. Instead of pair-wise comparison, VFT uses multiple single-value decomposition functions to quantify the value of different alternatives. These functions can take on many different forms providing great flexibility in scoring different attributes.

Dear Dr. Victor Middleton , Thanks for answering,

Please don’t get me wrong. I was talking about multi-criteria Classification (sorting) problems NOT raking problems.

Bernard Roy (1981) has described four problem formulations within the MCDM context:

a) Choice problem: The goal is to select a single best action or to reduce the group of actions to a subset of equivalent or incomparable actions.

b) Sorting problem: Actions are sorted into ordered predefined categories. These methods are useful for a repetitive and/or automatic use. It can also be used for screening in order to reduce the number of actions to consider.

c) Ranking problem: Actions are ordered in a decreasing preference. The order can be complete or partial if we consider incomparable actions.

d) Description problem: The goal is to help the description of actions and their consequences.

Although I’m interested in searching about sorting methods (like ELECTRE-TRI and FlowSort), however, I'm curious to know other classification methods which can be considered as multi-criteria methods. At the end, I will prepare a list of methods.

Refer the following:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/BIJ-10-2017-0281/full/html

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JM2-12-2012-0042/full/html

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/17410381311292340/full/html

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JM2-02-2014-0012/full/html