The Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract

The complexity of the modern world is a much-acknowledged fact. As the human race develops, complexity increases. Technology has created various artefacts to relieve us of manual, routine and time-consuming tasks. The predictable and deterministic world of the past has been replaced by the uncertain, random and disorderly world of today. Technological advances in multiple fields of human activity have created a planet on which things happen at electronic speed. Rapidly increasing complexity and information overload have schemed together to drastically reduce the time available for making decisions. The decision-maker is stressed, overloaded with unsolicited information, has not enough time to analyse the situation, and yet must make decisions that have high-risk implications or consequences. What does the decision-maker need? Human decision-making in the world characterised above needs a quick-response analysis of the situation that some how captures the decision-maker’s intuition, judgement and experience. This can then be combined with detailed quantitative analysis based on the information glut that is churned out from the plethora of process measurements, balanced scorecards, business intelligence, data accumulation and information generation techniques and systems in place in various organisations.