Thomas Hanne is professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland. He received a masters degree in Economics from Ruhr-University Bochum, a masters degree in Computer Science from University Dortmund, and a PhD in Economics from FernUniversity Hagen. From 1999 to 2007 he worked at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITWM) in the Department of Optimization as senior scientist. Since then he is Professor for Information Systems at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland. Thomas Hanne is author of about 50 journal and conference articles. His current research interests include multicriteria decision analysis, evolutionary algorithms, metaheuristics, scheduling, discrete-event simulation, logistics, and supply chain management.

The talks gives a broad overview of the historical development of multi-objective decision making from early origins and its establishment as a distinct research field in the 1970s up to a mature discipline which we find today. This development led to a large number of different approaches which reflect the multidisciplinary nature of this science. Methodological contributions come from diverse fields such as mathematics, economics, engineering, psychology and other disciplines. Moreover, we put particular emphasis on practical applications of respective techniques in that field. We discuss an application scenario which is based on the roles of a decision analyst (= expert for multi-objective approaches) and a decision maker (= expert for the application domain). The presentation concludes with an outlook on possible future research directions.