A quality control approach to consistency paradoxes in the analytic hierarchy process

The Analytic Hierarchy Process requires a specific consistency check of the pairwise comparisons in order to ensure that the decision maker is being neither inconsistent nor random in his or her pairwise comparisons. However, there are many situations where the decision maker has been reasonable, logical and non-random in making the pairwise comparison and yet will fail the consistency check. This paper argues against the use of the standard consistency check. If a consistency test is to be done, a quality control approach is recommended.