Multi-Criteria Analysis in Compound Decision Processes. The AHP and the Architectural Competition for the Chamber of Deputies in Rome (Italy)

In 1967, a national architectural competition was released for a preliminary project proposal, aimed at the realization of the new building for the Chamber of Deputies in Rome. The outcomes of that competition were unusual: eighteen projects were declared joint winners, and no winner was consequently selected. With reference to that event, this research aims to examine the usefulness of the evaluation tools that are currently employed and the positive effects that one of these techniques would have had, as support for the identification of the “winner” project, are highlighted. Therefore, an hypothetical examination/adjustment of the decision process of that competition through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is developed, analyzing the outputs obtained by the implementations of this technique on the final decision. In addition to confirming the usefulness of the evaluation tools for compound and conflicting decision processes, the results of this experiment led to a further understanding of the socio-cultural dynamics related to the original outcomes of the competition analyzed. View Full-Tex

On a Consensus Measure in a Group Multi-Criteria Decision Making Problem.

A method for consensus measuring in a group decision problem is presented for the multiple criteria case. The decision process is supposed to be carried out according to Saaty's Analytic Hierarchy Process, and hence using pairwise comparison among the alternatives. Using a suitable distance between the experts' judgements, a scale transformation is proposed which allows a fuzzy interpretation of the problem and the definition of a consensus measure by means of fuzzy tools as linguistic quantifiers. Sufficient conditions on the expert's judgements are finally presented, which guarantee any a priori fixed consensus level to be reached.group decision making; multiple criteria; degree of consensus; fuzzy preferences

Performance Measurement Model for the Supplier Selection Based on AHP

The performance of the supplier is a crucial factor for the success or failure of any company. Rational and effective decision making in terms of the supplier selection process can help the organization to optimize cost and quality functions. The nature of supplier selection processes is generally complex, especially when the company has a large variety of products and vendors. Over the years, several solutions and methods have emerged for addressing the supplier selection problem (SSP). Experience and studies have shown that there is no best way for evaluating and selecting a specific supplier process, but that it varies from one organization to another. The aim of this research is to demonstrate how a multiple attribute decision making approach can be effectively applied for the supplier selection process

Decision-Making Framework for Medical Equipment Maintenance and Replacement in Private Hospitals

The process for medical equipment maintenance and replacement in hospitals is a challenging and demanding procedure. Further, the topic of making decisions to maintain or replace or upgrade medical equipment has been debated for a long time since errors equipment maintenance will increase equipment failure at undesirable times; or if early equipment replacement will result in high investment costs and premature disposal. Therefore, standard operating procedures or guidelines need to be in place to help healthcare facilities conduct a more organized and planned maintenance and replacement process. Many hospitals may already have established replacement guidelines or have implemented asset monitoring systems for this purpose. However, the effectiveness of this system has not yet been systematically evaluated. Several studies have been conducted on the same research topic, but most of the findings emphasize the replacement method rather than the criteria that contributed to the decision. Criteria for replacing medical equipment play an important role in ensuring that the equipment can be used cost-effectively. Thus, this research aims to identify important criteria that need to be considered for medical equipment maintenance and replacement focusing on private hospitals. This research was conducted in three phases: (1) a structured literature review; (2) semi-structured interviews with eleven (11) healthcare experts; and (3) a pairwise comparison survey with 50 biomedical engineers. A decision-making framework was developed based on the findings of these three research phases. The framework developed will provide guidelines for practitioners and academics to understand and make better decisions for medical equipment maintenance and replacement in the context of private hospitals

The selection of benchmarking partners for value management : an analytic approach

Author name used in this publication: Qiping Shen2007-2008 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

A new synthesis procedure for TOPSIS based on AHP

Vega et al. [1] analyzed the influence of the attributes’ dependence when ranking a set of alternatives in a multicriteria decision making problem with TOPSIS. They also proposed the use of the Mahalanobis distance to incorporate the correlations among the attributes in TOPSIS. Even in those situations for which dependence among attributes is very slight, the results obtained for the Mahalanobis distance are significantly different from those obtained with the Euclidean distance, traditionally used in TOPSIS, and also from results obtained using any other distance of the Minkowsky family. This raises serious doubts regarding the selection of the distance that should be employed in each case. To deal with the problem of the attributes’ dependence and the question of the selection of the most appropriate distance measure, this paper proposes to use a new method for synthesizing the distances to the ideal and the anti-ideal in TOPSIS. The new procedure is based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process and is able to capture the relative importance of both distances in the context given by the measure that is considered; it also provides rankings, which are closer to the distances employed in TOPSIS, regardless of the dependence among the attributes. The new technique has been applied to the illustrative example employed in Vega et al. [1]