Development of decision support system for product selection based on AHP, using the decision rule of rough set for qualitative evaluation

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is an effective method for product selection support because it evaluates alternatives based on the total weight, which is a quantitative value. The total weight is obtained by multiplying the ratio of each evaluation criterion for the target user and the weights of alternatives in each evaluation criterion. The determination of weights in the qualitative evaluation criterion is difficult because of the necessity to compare the questionnaire results of all alternatives. This article proposes Decision Support System for Product Selection based on AHP, using the decision rule of Rough Set for Qualitative Evaluation. The proposed system makes decision rules based on the target user's judgment of "Good" or "Bad" on several samples in the qualitative evaluation criterion. Decision rules have a qualitative and quantitative evaluation value for each attribute, and the system calculates the weight of the AHP through normalization of these evaluation values. The user can know the results easily because the evaluation method of alternative samples in the proposed system is the same as that of correspondence with the shop assistant in an actual store. Based on two experiments, we confirm that the setup of attributes for decision rules of rough sets is one of the most important elements of the proposed system.