Application ofHierarchical Decision Modeling forSelection ofLaptop
Phakphoom Chuengparsitporn, Adriana Cutar · 2007
In this paperwewillbringinadecision making process ofselecting thebestlaptop tobuyforacollege student. We usedtheHierarchal decision modeling inordertoconstruct thedecision model. First wehavetoselect thecriteria thatare important toourstudent. Thepaperdiscusses fourdifferent criteria asabaseinstructuring thedecision model. Whenthese different criteria areselected, a setofsub-criteria forevery majorcriterion ischosenbasedon ourteam's judgment as experts inthis project. Eachofthese sub-criteria contributes as apartofeachmajorcriterion's weight orrelative importance. Afterselecting thecriteria, themodelisvalidated ontenofthe mostpopular laptops intheyear2006.Oncethesestepsare established, themodelcanbecalculated; comparisons between thealternatives will bemadeandthebestlaptop tobuywill be recommended baseduponthecriteria. I.INTRODUCTION Inthis paper, wewillapply theHierarchical decision modeling (HDM)tool proposed byDr.D.F.Kocaoglu toa simple reallife problem (4). Thismodelbreaks downthe various elements oftheproblem intosmaller sub-problems suchthat thedecision problem isrepresented asahierarchy. Thistoolformulates a decision process whereeither qualitative orquantitative judgments canbemeasured (1). Basedonthecriteria that wewouldlike tojudge against, pair wisecomparison isimplemented tomeasure preferences. The mainobjective islocated inthefirst level ofthehierarchy, andthegoals beinganalyzed inthelowerlevels. The alternatives that weareevaluating appear thelowest level of thehierarchy. A decision hierarchy isusually represented by atreediagram, whichinourpaper involves agoal, criteria, andalternatives. A.Problem Statement Thetechnological advances intheworldinthelast decades provided types ofequipment inourhands that were notevenpossible tomanufacture 50 yearsago.The innovations of personal computers andlaptops have transformed thewaytheworldworks. Today's laptops are muchmorepowerful thaneventhehottest desktop computers ofyesterday. Theyarealsolighter andmuchmorestylish. Manypeople areconsidering theusealaptop fortheir entire computer needs instead ofdesktops. (10) Purchasing alaptop could beaharddecision todo,and canbecomplicated byalloftheoptions, brands, and technical specifications that needs tobeconsidered. Before anybody spends moneyonalaptop, itisimportant tospend a little timeconsidering somebasics thatmay affect the decision-making process (7). Thisreport will takealookat several factors worthtaking intoaccount whenbuying a laptop computer.