Dear Mohamad Shahiir Saidin, Lai Soon Lee, Siti Mahani Marjugi , Muhammad Zaini Ahmad and Hsin-Vonn Seow

I have read your paper

Fuzzy Method Based on the Removal Effects of Criteria (MEREC) for Determining Objective Weights in Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Problems

And here are my comments:

1- In page 4 you say “The benefit is that decision makers can explain the relative weightage of the criteria”

Can explain? Based on what? Can a DM determine that criterion ‘Velocity of cutting metal’ is say 2 times more important than ‘Disposable income’, based of course, on a third common objective like ‘Maximize sales? If the DM is not trained in engineering and at the same time in economics, most probably he/she does not have any idea of what these two terms mean.

If there are two DMs (DM1 and DM2), respectively trained in these two disciplines, how can DM1 judge what DM2 says an vice versa?

And on the next paragraph you say in a very concise and clear language “Weighting has the drawback of being constrained by the knowledge and potential bias of those doing the weighting itself”, and thus, confirming what I say.

You also say “Although the criteria weight is optional for alternative selection methods, it can assist in making complex selections because all criteria are unlikely to have the same importance value’

2- Yes, it is unlikely all criteria having the same importance; however, criteria weights are not related with the capacity of a criterion to evaluate alternatives; they only indicate the relative importance of criteria

3- In page 5 you say “The hybrid methods could deliver more precise weights since they consider both the perceptions of the decision makers and the information from the decision matrix”

Yes, this is true, however, both are different entities with different functions. Entropy derived weights measure mathematically the ability or capacity of criteria to evaluate alternatives, since they indicate the information content of each criterion, given by the dispersion of its values.

Subjective weights measure arbitrarily the importance of a criterion regarding another. In reality, they are not even weights but trade-offs.

Therefore, how can we use both at the same time? It appears like putting in the same basket apples and bananas

4- In page 6 “In general, the term “subjective weighting” refers to the action of allocating subjective preferences to the decision criteria that are established depending by the decision-makers’ perception, knowledge and technical skills”

That would be the ideal; but there are methods that select preferences based on intuition, and therefore, useless.

5- In page 15 “In a MCDM process, determining the criteria weights is essential”

True for most methods, but not for Linear Programming or SIMUS. Both develop internally the weights based of how data changes along the process. That is, weights are not constant, as assumed by all MCDM methods.

6- Very important what the paper says in page 16, regarding the trend followed by the fuzzy MEREC.

It is really a very good contribution to MCDM

Hope that these comments may help you

Nolberto Munier