Rank Reversal and Rank Preservation in TOPSIS

Abstract

TOPSIS has been in use for more than 20 years in many fields. However, few researches have studied its defect of rank reversal. This paper, by studying the fundamental cause for the rank reversal problem in TOPSIS, put forward an improvement on TOPSIS based on the decision maker’s subjective preferences, which can, proved by a numerical example, overcome the rank reversal problem and lead to more scientific decision result that is in more agreement with the decision makers’ subjective intensions.