Optimal expansion of incorporating competence sets with multilevel skills

The purpose of competence set expansion is to find an optimal expansion process at minimal cost and then obtain the required competence set from the acquired competence set to solve a problem. Several models have been proposed to address the competence set expansion problem of only a single decision maker or multiple decision makers without considering multilevel skills. However, a practical competence set expansion model should involve multiple decision makers and multilevel skills. This study therefore discusses an optimal expansion model of incorporating competence sets of group decision makers with multilevel skills. The proposed method not only obtains the optimal competence set expansion of all decision makers with maximal total benefits but obtains all optimal alternatives of the competence set expansion model. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed method.