Group decision-making system based on a qualitative location function. An application to chocolates design

Group decision making (GDM) is the situation faced when individuals collectively make a choice from a set of alternatives. When a group of experts is involved in the design of a new product as a team, consensus and GDM techniques able to deal with complex descriptions can be required. Concretely, when individual decision is based on human sensory perception, such as color, smell or taste, the individual decision to be aggregate is usually qualitative and it is made under uncertainty. In this paper we consider a methodology based upon qualitative reasoning techniques for representing and synthesizing the information given by a group of experts in order to capture the sensorial aspects of the alternatives. A real application of the proposed GDM method to chocolates design has been conducted throughout 2012 with the Chocolate Chef Oriol Balaguer's team. We present the results obtained by applying the proposed methodology to aggregate experts' opinion during a creative session. In this session, some members of Oriol Balaguer's team tested and evaluated combinations of black chocolate with six different fruits, considered as alternatives, to select the best combination for the design and creation of a new cake.