Decision Support System for Selection Using Analytical Network Process

Abstract

Decision support system is a type of information system whose principal objective is to support a human decision maker during the process of arriving at a decision. Decision-making problem is the process of finding the best option from all the flexible alternatives. Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) is selection of the best action from a set of alternatives, each of which is evaluated against multiple, and often conflicting criteria. There are many MCDM methods such as Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Analytical Network Process (ANP), Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT), Weighted Sum Model (WSM) and so on. Among other MCDM approaches, ANP has been coming into applications in relevant areas three years ago. ANP has been applied in a variety of areas as a useful and practical multi-criteria decision problem. In real life problems that involve dependence and feedback, ANP is an effective tool for decision-making. There are dependence and feedback among elements and alternatives in many real world cases. Feedback enables to factor the future into present to determine how to attain a desired future. Decision-making with feedback and dependence improves the priorities derived from judgments and make prediction more accurate. In this thesis, ANP model is used to make decision for finding laptop and also considered dependence and feedback among decision criteria such as processor, processor speed, hard disk, memory, battery, operating system, price, weight, dimension, color and warranty. This system is implemented as a web-based decision support system. It also provides the user to browse the detail information of laptop. Moreover, user can get decision for finding the suitable laptop, by using this web-based decision support system. This system is implemented with PHP language and MySQL is used for data storage.