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The iron and steel industry of China has a wide distribution structure, which leads to low production efficiency, high resource use, and weak bargaining power among global competitors. A carefully planned and executed restructuring of the industry will provide the enterprise with a competitive advantage. Making the optimal restructuring decisions, however, is not easy because: 1) the decisions involve qualitative measures within a complex and uncertain environment, 2) the alternatives include up to 31 administrative regions, and 3) there are astounding differences in the economic development among the 31 alternatives. The orders-of-magnitude approach of the analytic hierarchy process (OM-AHP) could be a useful method to tackle the first and second challenges. However, this approach does not currently explain how to address the large differences between small items in a cluster and big items in a cluster …