Ideal Reference Method with Linguistic Labels: A Comparison with LTOPSIS Elio H. Cables, María Teresa Lamata and José Luis Verdegay Abstract In many life situations we are in the presence of decision making problems, therefore it becomes necessary to study different theories, methods and tools to solve these kinds of problems as efficiently as possible. In this paper, we describe the elements that integrate a decision making model, as well as show some of the compensatory multicriteria decision making methods such as TOPSIS, VIKOR or RIM, that are most used. In particular, we identify the limitations of the RIM method to operate with linguistic labels. Next, the basic concepts of the Reference Ideal Method are described, and another variant is proposed to determine the minimum distance to the Reference Ideal, as well as the normalization function. We illustrate our method by means of an example and compare the results with those obtained by the LTOPSIS method. Finally, the conclusions are presented. Keywords Multicriteria decision making · Reference ideal method · RIM 1 Introduction There are different situations where it is necessary to solve a decision making prob- lem. To facilitate the work of the decision maker, different methods have been devel- oped, among which the Multicriteria Decision Making methods (MCDM) can be mentioned. Particularly, we will refer to the methods with a compensatory concep- tion [1]. The purpose of this kind of problem is the selection of the best alterna- tive A i , i  1, 2,..., m, from the evaluation of each alternative for a criteria set E. H. Cables (B ) Universidad Antonio Nariño, Bogotá, Colombia e-mail: ehcables@uan.edu.co M. T. Lamata · J. L. Verdegay Universidad de Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain e-mail: mtl@decsai.ugr.es J. L. Verdegay e-mail: verdegay@decsai.ugr.es © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 R. Bello et al. (eds.), Uncertainty Management with Fuzzy and Rough Sets, Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing 377, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10463-4_6 115