AHP-OS Update July 2019

After many hours of work, I released a new version of my free AHP online system AHP-OS. The whole package was restructured in preparation to make it available for an installation on any other web server.

Beside a lot of under-the-hood improvements, the software now runs under php 7.2 and sqlite 3.10. It should be faster than before. I also prepared to switch from sqlite to MariaDB 10 SQL database, as the number of users is increasing steadily, and the sqlite file getting larger and larger.

New Features

For you, as a user, an additional feature has been implemented. You can now close a project for further pairwise comparison inputs. Once closed, participants can no longer input data.

Message for participants, when the project is closed

The project status can be toggled between open/closed in the project administration menu.

Project Administration Menu: additional button Toggle Project Status on the right.

The project status is shown in your AHP project list as 1 – open, 0 – closed.

As a project author you can now also start pairwise comparisons directly from the Project administration Menu.

Start pairwise comparisons for your project with PWC Input.

New Web Address

AHP-OS can now be easily accessed via the subdomain ahp.bpmsg.com . The package was moved from bpmsg.com/academic to bpmsg.com/ahp. If you have bookmarked the old address, you will be automatically redirected.

AHP-OS and AHP Judgment Scales – Published Articles

My latest articles related to AHP:

AHP-OS:

Goepel, K.D. (2018). Implementation of an Online Software Tool for the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP-OS). International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process, Vol. 10 Issue 3 2018, pp 469-487

https://doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v10i3.590

https://www.ijahp.org/index.php/IJAHP/article/view/590/652

AHP Judgment scales:

Goepel, K.D. (2018). Comparison of Judgment Scales of the Analytical Hierarchy Process — A New Approach. International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making, published Dec 11, 2018

https://doi.org/10.1142/S0219622019500044

Welcome to BPMSG – Jan 2018

Concepts, Methods and Tools to manage Business Performance

Dear Friends, dear Visitors,

I wish all of you a Happy and Prosperous New Year 2018!

From July 13th to 15th the International Symposium on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (ISAHP) for Decision Making takes place in Hong Kong. Poster submission is possible from Nov 1st, 2017 to Mar 15th, 2018 and individual paper submission from Nov 1st, 2017 to Mar 6th. Early registration deadline May 15th, 2018. More Information about the ISAHP 2018 can be found on their website.

After my last participation in 2013, I plan to attend the conference in July. If you want to meet me personally, feel free to contact me. I submitted an individual paper about the implementation of my AHP-OS software; it is a short version of my detailed working paper. In additon I will probably submit a short version of my paper Comparison of Judgment Scales of the Analytical Hierarchy Process – A New Approach. This paper was submitted to the International Journal of Information Technology and Decision Making in June 2017, and is under review since then. All attempts to contact the editors and to find out, why the review process takes so long, were unsuccessful.

My AHP-OS software has now reached nearly 6000 registrations since its implementation in 2014. It should be quite stable and without major bugs. Unfortunately, there is still a minor sporadic problem with the storage of pairwise comparisons. It appears in 1 out of 1000 projects that a set pairwise comparisons just disappears. I am still trying to find the reason, kindly contact me, when this happens to you, and let me know the circumstances (It seems to have something to do with the browser and stored session data).

Please continue to support my effort, either with a donation, or at least give a 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) rating to my web posts, which will help me to get some feedback on my work.

For now, please enjoy your visit on the site and feel free to leave a comment – it is always appreciated.

Klaus

Klaus D. Goepel,

Singapore, Jan 2018

BPMSG stands for Business Performance Management Singapore. As of now, it is a non-commercial website, and information is shared for educational purposes. Please see licensing conditions and terms of use.

 

AHP-OS Quick Reference Guide

As I know from my own experience, manuals are seldomly read. On the other hand, a short guideline to complex software can be helpful, to use it effectively. I summarised the main menus of AHP-OS in a four page quick reference guide. The full manual is still available from the AHP-OS entry page (needs update …), and all details regarding methods and calculations are shown in my working paper about the AHP-OS software implemetation.

 

Sensitivity Analysis in AHP

Sensitivity analysis is a fundamental concept in the effective use and implementation of quantitative decision models, whose purpose is to assess the stability of an optimal solution under changes in the parameters. (Dantzig)

Weighted sum model (Alternative Evaluation)

In AHP the preference Pi of alternative Ai is calculated using the following formula (weighted sum model):
(1)with  Wj the weight of criterion Cj, and aij the performance measure of alternative Ai with respect to criterion Cj. Performance values  are normalized.
(2)

Example


Table 1

Sensitivity analysis will answer two questions:

  • Which is the most critical criterion, and
  • Which is the most critical performance measure,

changing the ranking between two alternatives?

Continue reading Sensitivity Analysis in AHP

Weight Uncertainties in AHP-OS

It is now possible, to analyse the weight uncertainties in your AHP-OS projects. When you view the results (View Result from the Project Administration Menu), you see the drop-down list for different AHP scales and a tick box var is shown.

Tick var and click on Refresh. All priority vectors of your project will display the weight uncertainties with (+) and (-).

Continue reading Weight Uncertainties in AHP-OS

AHP Judgment Scales

The original AHP uses ratio scales. To derive priorities, verbal statements (comparisons) are converted into integers from 1 to 9. This “fundamental AHP scale” has been discussed, as there is no thoretical reason to be restricted to these numbers and verbal gradations. In the past several other numerical scales have been proposed [1],[3]. AHP-OS now supports ten different scales:

  1. Standard AHP linear scale
  2. Logarithmic scale
  3. Root square scale
  4. Inverse linear scale
  5. Balanced scale
  6. Balanced-n scale
  7. Adaptive-bal scale
  8. Adaptive scale
  9. Power scale
  10. Geometric scale


Fig. 1 Mapping of the 1 to 9 input values to the elements of the decision matrix.

Continue reading AHP Judgment Scales

AHP-OS Data Download and Import in Excel

Most data generated with AHP-OS can be downloaded as csv files for import into a spreadsheet program and further analysis:

  • From the Hierarchy Input Menu – decision hierarchy and local & global priorities
  • From the Group Result Menu – Priorities by node and consolidated decision matrix
  • From the Project Data Menu – Decision matrices from each participant

For each download you can select “.” or “,” as decimal separator. The downloaded csv (text) file is coded in UTF-8 and supports multi-language characters like Chinese, Korean, Japanese and of course a variety of Western languages.

How to import into excel?

Open Excel, click on “File” -> “New” to have a blank worksheet. Click on “Data“. On the left top you will find the “Get External Data” box.

Continue reading AHP-OS Data Download and Import in Excel

AHP-OS – Editing saved projects

In the project menu of the latest AHP-OS version (2017-05-25), I added a button to edit saved projects. As long as there are no participants’ inputs (completed pairwise comparisons), any saved project’s hierarchy, alternatives or description can be modified.

Open a project from your project list, and click on Edit Project. The project hierarchy page will open with a message on top , indicating that you are modifying an existong project. You can now change the hierarchy, for example add criteria or alternatives. A click on Save/Update in the Hierarchy Input Menu

will overwrite the data of the original project under the same session code. You will see it in a message . Before you click on Go to save,  you  can also update the project short description:

Continue reading AHP-OS – Editing saved projects

;