MACBETHSort: a multiple criteria decision aid procedure for sorting strategic products

Abstract

Efficient companies need to know which their strategic products are. For this purpose, the ABC classification based on the item’s value was developed and was used for a long time. Later, it was recognised that several other criteria need to be considered and multi-criteria ranking methods were applied. However, the classes have always been defined based only on a relative proportion. Therefore, the number of products in a class is independent of the actual importance of the products. In this paper, a new sorting procedure MACBETHSort is introduced, which is an evolution of the choice, ranking and rating technique MACBETH. The procedure has been validated in a real case study for assigning access and entrance solutions in ABC classes.

Keywords:

• MACBETH
• MACBETHSort
• sorting
• MCDA
• ABC classification

Acknowledgments

I wish also to thank Ian Stevens and Salvatore Greco for their proofreading and comments.