More than often one finds the need to make a fast decision based on qualitative parameters. Imagine if you have the money to treat yourself a new car. Immediate question will be what car should I buy? Definitely, price and comfort may not be the only factors that one would only rely on.

Making qualitative decision at times requires a lot of factors to consider. This tool helps executives to gauge those factors and make the decision fast.

A qualitative decision process would require the identification of factors that would contribute to the goal, i.e. build the hierarchy:

In ranking or making a decision, the criteria can be decomposed to sub-criteria or even lower level in the hierarchy as necessary.

Relative to the goal, compare each of the criteria a pair at a time by examining the combinations of the pair according to the numerical scale from 1 (equal contribution) to 9 (Extreme strong contribution of one to the other criteria in respect to the goal).

After the comparison of each criterion, the tool will further generate the weights of contribution of each factor to the decision of choosing the best car:

But how consistent are these weights? The tool provides an index that indicates the consistency of the whole weighing process. Using this process, the consistency index must be less than 10% for our consistent judgements to hold true.

Based on the example above, we can conclude the following weights:

With a consistency index of less than 10%, the judgements are consistent.

Now compare the alternatives.

The results for alternatives relative to Initial Costs are given as follows:

We proceed by comparing all the other alternatives and for the sake of the completion of the example the following are the results:

Now we rate all the alternatives by calculating the overall priorities.

In this particular example, based on the user’s priorities, Honda City is the best choice, with Waja a distant second, as its score is the highest in the most critical factors of selecting the best car.

Of course, this is subjected to the relative important of the criteria, which may change from time to time. The important thing is that response to such changes can be done swiftly.

This is a simple example; using relative measurement between alternatives. The extended tool allows weighing of relevant factors consistently at a faster speed than what the normal ‘gut-feeling’ approach and using of absolute measurement for ranking of endless list of alternatives.

Other features are also in the pipeline, which include:

There are numerous areas where consistent weighs must be employed in order executives to make the right choice and decision consistently. Other areas include: