Evaluation of services using a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process.pdfVIP

Applied Soft Computing 5 (2004) 23–33 Evaluation of services using a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process L. Mikhailov a,∗, P. Tsvetinovb a Computation Department, University of Manchester, Institute of Science and Technology, Sackville Street, P.O. Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK b School of Information Systems, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street, G.P.O. Box 2434, Brisbane, Qld. 4001, Australia Received 23 March 2003; received in revised form 2 June 2003; accepted 8 April 2004 Abstract This paper proposes a new approach for tackling the uncertainty and imprecision of the service evaluation process. Iden- tifying suitable service offers, evaluating the offers and choosing the best alternatives are activities that set the scene for the consequent stages in negotiations and influence in a unique manner the following deliberations. The pre-negotiation problem in negotiations over services is regarded as decision-making under uncertainty, based on multiple criteria of quantitative and qualitative nature, where the imprecise decision-maker’s judgements are represented as fuzzy numbers. A new fuzzy modifi- cation of the analytic hierarchy process is applied as an evaluation technique. The proposed fuzzy prioritisation method uses fuzzy pairwise comparison judgements rather than exact numerical values of the comparison ratios and transforms the initial fuzzy prioritisation problem into a non-linear program. Unlike the known fuzzy prioritisation techniques, the proposed method derives crisp weights from consistent and inconsistent fuzzy comparison matrices, which eliminates the need of additional aggregation and ranking procedures. A detailed numerical example, illustrating the application of our approach to service evaluation is given. © 2004