A quality confidence procedure for GDSS application in multicriteria decision-making

This paper introduces a procedure for improving the quality of group decision making. Emphasis is placed on the identification of outliers and on the establishment of confidence limits in group decision making. Participants in group decision making whose opinions fall outside the group’s tolerance level are further studied to annex the source of this variation. The study presents 30 stakeholders with the task of deciding whether or not to adopt a new manufacturing technology (computer integrated manufacturing). The goal in either choice is the improvement of the total productivity of the organization. The decision made by this group is based on a pairwise comparison of seven manufacturing dimensions. Priorities for these criteria are generated using the analytic hierarchy process. These priorities are analysed to identify potential outliers. Procedures on how to manage outliers in order to improve the quality of decisions arrived at by the group are provided.