Decision Making With Dependence And Feedback

This book shows how to make decisions when alternatives depend on criteria, but also the criteria depend on the alternatives. It shows how to cope with dependence between different groups of people, goals and criteria. The Analytic Network Process is particularly useful to project the future of a group or company considering all the influences and risks: economic, social, political, technological, environmental, and others. Accompanying ANP software is under development.

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and its generalization to dependence and feedback, the Analytic Network Process (ANP), are methods of relative measurement of tangibles and intangibles. Being able to derive such measurements is essential for making good decisions. This book is based on the Analytic Network Process and lays out a new approach for making decisions in light of their benefits, opportunities, costs and risks (BOCR) shows how to include the strategic criteria of the decision-maker that must be satisfied regardless of the particular decision being undertaken. This book includes all the important background material from the earlier book, The Analytic Network Process: Decision Making with Dependence and Feedback, published in 2001, and goes farther with new examples of estimating market share of companies based on the intangibles of customer perception, and new applications involving Benefits, Opportunities, Costs and Risks.

The Analytic Network Process (ANP), developed by Thomas Saaty in his work on multicriteria decision making, applies network structures with dependence and feedback to complex decision making. This new edition of Decision Making with the Analytic Network Process is a selection of the latest applications of ANP to economic, social and political decisions, and also to technological design. The ANP is a methodological tool that is helpful to organize knowledge and thinking, elicit judgments registered in both in memory and in feelings, quantify the judgments and derive priorities from them, and finally synthesize these diverse priorities into a single mathematically and logically justifiable overall outcome. In the process of deriving this outcome, the ANP also allows for the representation and synthesis of diverse opinions in the midst of discussion and debate. The book focuses on the application of the ANP in three different areas: economics, the social sciences and the linking of measurement with human values. Economists can use the ANP for an alternate approach for dealing with economic problems than the usual mathematical models on which economics bases its quantitative thinking. For psychologists, sociologists and political scientists, the ANP offers the methodology they have sought for some time to quantify and derive measurements for intangibles. Finally the book applies the ANP to provide people in the physical and engineering sciences with a quantitative method to link hard measurement to human values. In such a process, one is able to interpret the true meaning of measurements made on a uniform scale using a unit.

This book is about how to make decisions using the Analytic Hierarchy Process. The basics of the theory are described in a clear, non-technical manner with many examples. It is suitable for business leaders and also is probably the best book for introducing the AHP to students at the college and graduate level. In this fifth printing of the book the reader will find a new appendix containing real-life applications that validate the use of the fundamental scale of the AHP.

When a group makes a decision, that decision carries a lot more weight than when just one person does it. Think of the founding fathers of the American constitution and how much power and influence their ideas have had in the entire world for more than two hundred years. Also think of gravity, a universal force brought about by an enormous number of minute particles that band together to make a universal law. Together, they create a massive force, a law of nature; alone they can barely be noticed. That is how our minds work by deciding together to create a power that transcends our individuality. Group decision making is a gift and an opportunity to create greater influence through the working together of many minds. This book shows how to use the Analytic Hierarchy Process for hierarchical decision making and the Analytic Network Process for decision making in networks with dependence and feedback in group decision making. Part I discusses the group and the decision and shows the importance of using a structured process, particularly for those high value decisions involving many powerful parties with different interests. It discusses how to facilitate a group decision, combine individual judgments and smooth differences to arrive at a decision that everyone can live with and get behind. Part II discusses the group in planning and how to draw out differences. Part III is about conflict resolution and Part IV is about how to address significant issues that come up in group decision making and shows that it is possible to construct an overall group preference.

Volume 1 has a very comprehensive chapter that describes the Analytic Network Process and a step by step description on how to design and implement a Benefits - Opportunities - Costs and Risks model. The Encyclicon is an advanced dictionary of structures used to represent complex decisions. The first dictionary of hierarchic decision making was the Hierarchon. Since hierarchies are a special case of networks, the examples given here can be regarded as more general and complete representation of decision making. In particular, except for a group of market share examples, they all involve decisions made by considering Benefits (B), Opportunities (O), Costs (C) and Risks (R). They also involve a synthesis of these BOCR merits into a single overall best outcome for a decision. This is the first volume of the series of Encyclicon books. Each of the books contains different models from different years, collected by a different author along with Thomas L. Saaty and although all books tackle similar topics there are different models and different approaches on how to summarize and represent models for general use. These books are meant as a reference guide when you try to set up ANP or AHP complex decision models. The case studies in the books are linked to online reference material related to that which often include the super decision model, power point presentation and the original report of the case.

This note from Prof. Vargas regarding a competitive title by Prof. Saaty with an almost identical title (THEORY AND APPLICATIONS OF THE ANALYTIC NETWORK PROCESS: Decision Making with Benefits, Opportunities, Costs, and Risks. RWS Publications, 2005): "The other book is theoretical with passing mention of examples to show how the subject is used. In our book (the one you have) the applications are different and given in full detail relevance and originality. They have never appeared in print as they are here and most users would prefer them to the theoretical book. In addition chapter 1 summarizes the theory given in four chapters on the book showing the important parts without going into too much detail. I would rather read this book than the other one definitely and this could not have been done so elegantly had not the other been written before. Therefore this book has the cream of the ideas and the best published applications so far."

This book is a comprehensive summary, primarily of the author's own thinking and research, about the Analytic Hierarchy Process and decision making. It includes advanced mathematical theory and diverse applications. Fundamentals of Decision Making has all the latest theoretical developments in the AHP and new theoretical material not published elsewhere. We consider this book to be the replacement for the original book on the subject, The Analytic Hierarchy Process that was published by McGraw Hill Publishers, New York.