Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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Typical application areas
Resource allocation
Hiring, evaluating and promoting employees
TQM
Strategic planning
Relocation decisions
Vendor selection
Evaluating mergers and acquisitions
Selecting a car for purchasing
Deciding upon a place to visit for vacation
Deciding upon an MBA program after graduation.
How widespread is its use?
IBM NASA
Goodyear IRS
Ford Motor Co. FBI
..a few of the thousands of
Citibank Department of
organizations using AHP Defense
and EC
Xerox World Bank
Boeing Texaco
AT&T Eastman Kodak
General Motors Inter-American
Bank
AHP-General Idea
Develop an hierarchy of decision criteria and define the
alternative courses of actions.
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Example: Car Selection
Objective
Selecting a car
Criteria
Style, Reliability, Fuel-economy Cost?
Alternatives
Civic Coupe, Saturn Coupe, Ford Escort,
Mazda Miata
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Analytic Hierarchy Process
Step 1: Structure a hierarchy. Define the problem,
determine the criteria and identify the alternatives.
Overall Goal Select the Best Toothbrush Manufacturer
Selecting
a New Car
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Analytic Hierarchy Process
Row
Normalized 0.30 0.29 0.38 0.30
1 0.5 3 Column Sums
averages
A= 2 1 4 0.60 0.57 0.50 0.60
X=
0.33 0.25 1.0 0.10 0.14 0.13 0.10
Priority vector
Column sums 3.33 1.75 8.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
Eigen Vector
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Consistency - 1
An important consideration in terms of the
quality of the ultimate decision relates to the
consistency of judgments that the decision
maker demonstrated during the series of
pairwise comparisons.
It should be realized perfect consistency is very
difficult to achieve and that some lack of consistency
is expected to exist in almost any set of pairwise
comparisons.
Example:
Consistency - 2
To handle the consistency question, the AHP
provides a method for measuring the degree of
consistency among the pairwise judgments
provided by the decision maker.
If the degree of consistency is acceptable, the decision
process can continue.
If the degree of consistency is unacceptable, the
decision maker should reconsider and possibly revise
the pairwise comparison judgments before
proceeding with the analysis.
Consistency Ratio
The AHP provides a measure of the
consistency of pairwise comparison
judgments by computing a consistency
ratio
The ratio is designed in such a way that values
of the ratio exceeding 0.10 are indicative of
inconsistent judgments.
Although the exact mathematical
computation of the consistency ratio is
beyond the scope of this text, an
approximation of the ratio can be obtained.
Procedure: Estimating Consistency Ratio - 1
n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
RI 0.00 0.00 0.58 0.90 1.12 1.24 1.32 1.41 1.45 1.49
Example: Inconsistency
Preferences: If, A B (2); B C (6)
Then, A C (4) (should be 8)
Inconsistency
max n 3.019 3
CI 0.010
n 1 3 1
CI 0.010
CR 0.017 0.10
RI 0.58
The degree of consistency exhibited in the pairwise comparison
matrix for comfort is acceptable.
Development of Priority Ranking
The overall priority for each decision
alternative is obtained by summing the
product of the criterion priority (i.e.,
weight) (with respect to the overall goal)
times the priority (i.e., preference) of the
decision alternative with respect to that
criterion.
Ranking these priority values, we will have
AHP ranking of the decision alternatives.
Example:
Example: Priority Ranking 0A
Step 0A: Other pairwise comparison matrices
Criterion
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Ranking of Alternative
Price MPG Comfort Style Criterion
Style
Comfort
MPG
Priority matrix
Criteria Weights 36
Complex decisions
Many levels of criteria and sub-criteria exists for
complex problems.
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AHP Software:
computations
sensitivity analysis
graphs, tables
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More about AHP: Pros and Cons
AHP is technique for formalizing decision making such that
It is applicable when it is difficult to formulate criteria evaluations, i.e., it allows
qualitative evaluation as well as quantitative evaluation.
It is applicable for group decision making environments
However
There are hidden assumptions like consistency
Difficult to use when there are large number of evaluations Use GDSS
Use constraints to
eliminate some
alternatives
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Group Decision Making
The AHP allows group decision making, where group members can use their
experience, values and knowledge to break down a problem into a hierarchy
and solve. Doing so provides:
However;
The GDSS does not replace all the requirements for group decision making.
Open meetings with the involvement of all members are still an asset.
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References
Al Harbi K.M.A.S. (1999), Application of AHP in Project Management, International
Journal of Project Management, 19, 19-27.
Haas R., Meixner, O., (2009) An Illustrated Guide to the Analytic Hierarchy Process,
Lecture Notes, Institute of Marketing & Innovation, University of Natural Resources
and http://www.boku.ac.at/mi/
Saaty, T.L., Vargas, L.G., (2001), Models, Methods, Concepts & Applications of the
Analytic Hierarchy Process, Kluwers Academic Publishers, Boston, USA.
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Exercise
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Case
A motorist is using the AHP to choose a new car from three possible
models: an Arrow, a bestmobile and a commuter. The choice will be
based on just two attributes: cost and style. The motorist considers
that cost is weakly more important than style.
When asked to compare the costs of the cars, the motorist makes
the followig statements: on cost, the bestmobile is weakly preferred
to the arrow, but the arrow is weakly preferred to the commuter. Also
the bestmobile is extremely preferred to the commuter.