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PresentationPresentation
The ANP is a multicriteria decision aid method proposed by professor Thomas L. Saaty of the Pittsburg University. The great advantadge of this method in front of its predecessor AHP, which has been widele used and spread, is that it allows to analyse influences among the elements of the decision making problem.
The main steps of the method are:
- To identify the elements of the problema (alternatives and criteria)
- To group the elements into clusters. The clusters can be organized in one or more levels and sublevels.
- To identify the influence relationships among elements.
- To prioritize the influence relationships on each element.
- To calculate the resulting priorities.
There is a free software SuperDecisions
to apply this method. It allows to
define the elements, their relationships, to introduce the intensity of the relationships and to obtain results in a very easy way. The information needed in
steps 3 and 4 is usually gathered by asking experts, who should define if there exists or not an influence between two elements over a third
one and its intensity. These experts do not always have available time to answer the questions in front of the computer, therefore, a questionnaire has
to be written. This step, to write the questionnaires, does not add any value to the decisión making process but is very time consuming.
The software SuperDecisions-Q reads the model constructed with SuperDecisions and allows to write quickly the questionnaires needed in the ANP process:
- Relationships questionnaire
- Elements prioritization questionnaire
- Groups prioritization questionnaire
SuperDecisions-Q is codified in JAVA script. You need to have JAVA installed in your computer, if you do not have it, you can download it from the official web page
www.java.com
The software is implemented in English and Spanish, you can select the language from the main menu. It has two Windows: the main one to write questionnaires and the other one for the options. It also has a help menu in English and Spanish with examples of questionnaires.