A multi-criteria decision making approach for food engineering

The objective of this study was to propose a decision making approach and tools (software packages) to solve the multi-criteria decision making problems arising in the food engineering. The proposed decision making approach is based on a simultaneous utilization for a given set of Pareto-optimal solutions the two following decision making methods: 1) well-known Analytic Hierarchy Process method and 2) Tabular Method. The using of Tabular Method allows utilizing the AHP method in a straightforward manner, which avoids the information overload and makes the decision making process easier. The aggregating functions approach, adaptive random search algorithm coupled with penalty functions approach, and the finite difference method with cubic spline approximation were utilized in this study to compute the initial set of the Pareto-optimal solutions. The decision making software ―MPRIORITY‖ and ―T-CHOICE‖ based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process and Tabular Method methods, respectively, were utilized for choosing the best alternative among the obtained set of Pareto-optimal solutions. The proposed in this study approach and tools was successfully tested on the multi-objective optimization problem of the thermal processing of packaged food. The proposed decision making approach and tools are useful for food scientists (research and education) and engineers (real thermal food process evaluation and optimization).