Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process in a Graphical Approach.

Saaty's analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is widely used in many decision-making problems such as a choice of alternatives, prioritization, or ranking. Despite being a valuable tool based on pairwise comparisons of a set of alternatives the method is strongly connected with numeric or linguistic descriptors of the preferences. This can form a limitation to the users who do not feel comfortable with numbers or words strictly related with the articulation of the meaning of preference, i.e., with a predefined scale. Therefore, in this study, we develop a comprehensive approach based on a simple graphic interface. The results and their consistency as well as stability of the method are examined. Moreover, through a suite of experiments we observe how the method works when a group of experts does not provide answers to all questions. Finally, we analyze four variants of non-linear transforms which are used to minimize the inconsistency ratio of the AHP (fuzzy AHP) process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]