ABSTRACT
The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a method proposed by Thomas L. Saaty during the late 70. It was a considerable depart from the best known and used Compensatory Additive Methods, like SMART, and Non-Compensatory Outranking methodologies, like the ELECTRE family. AHP engages the DM through the construction of Judgment Matrices that compare pairwise Alternatives according to each criterion point of view. The DM will only evaluate alternatives by comparison to others and never individually. The same approach is also extended to the criteria, with the DM comparing them pairwise until the relative importance of all criteria can be calculated. The AHP methodology was received with mixed reactions from the Academy causing very intensive and fiery debates on both journals and academic meetings. Nevertheless, critics have been mostly rebated and by the XXI century the method was considered has having a tremendous contribution to not only Multicriteria Decision Making Theory but also in solving real life Multicriteria problems. This chapter presents the AHP method in detail, using several examples to illustrate its most distinguish features. The most commonly mentioned critics and corresponding Saaty’s contrapositions are also explored. A set of exercises covering all topics are proposed at the end of the chapter.
