Modelling the decision of paper shredder selection using analytic hierarchy process and graph theory and matrix approach

Abstract

There are so many paper shredder products available in the market, and the decision to select a 'right shredder' usually involves a number of criteria. For organizations, complexity arises when the procurement function is to purchase a massive amount of shredders of the same type. This study initiated the idea to use the analytic hierarchy process with graph theory and matrix approach for solving the problem. The proposed model determines the best shredder from a pool of alternatives, given the buyer-side decision-maker's preference settings. With the expert questionnaire polled and the heterogeneous real data collected, the model is applied to a reduced data set. The size of the decision problem is defined as 8 alternatives are filtered among 26, while the 7 justification attributes considered are fully kept for not losing the experimental meaning. The result shows the effectiveness and applicability of the approach to manage the encountered decision scientifically. As this also implies that not only buyers but also the manufacturers can use this model to analyse 'something', it is confident to conduct more future studies. The R script which implements the dynamic programming concept to calculate the assessed index scores for graph theory and matrix approach is perhaps another contribution of this study.

A Knowledge Discovery Education Framework Targeting the Effective Budget Use and Opinion Explorations in Designing Specific High Cost Product

“…Only one of them was interviewed twice and one of them was interviewed for the third time to pass the check. This also reflects the fact that our teaching material had let the hierarchy not exceed the psychological limit of 'the number of items to be compared for human by using AHP' [75][76][77]. Methodologically speaking, this is exactly a good effect from organizing the considered criteria under an additional layer of constructs.…”

Rank-Based Comparative Research Flow Benchmarking the Effectiveness of AHP–GTMA on Aiding Decisions of Shredder Selection by Reference to AHP–TOPSIS

“…This type of decision is important for business entities before launching a bulk purchase because of some properties of the decision problem itself. As can be summarized from [3], such a decision is important because of the following properties:…”

“…In the market, there are too many different types of shredder, each having its own special features. For example, in the purchase case studied by Zhuang, Chiang, Su and Chen [4] there were 26 options. Such fact deters a DM from justifying them properly and makes it harder to decide among so many alternatives.…”

“…(4) Hard to decide because there are multiple conflicting selection criteria present, but these criteria and the relative importance among them remains unknown. For this point, it was claimed in [4] that " . .…”

“…Therefore, Zhuang et al [4] used a hybrid MADM approach, AHP-GTMA (analytic hierarchy process and a graph theory and matrix approach), to model such a selection decision problem. For how the AHP-GTMA model was formulated in [4], see the digested review in Appendix A for details.…”