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The purpose of this paper is to present a detailed literature review of the recent applications of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and analytic network process (ANP) group decision‐making methodologies.

Among more than 600 related papers published in the period 2005‐2009, a total of 232 application articles published in highly reputed international academic journals were selected and referenced in this paper. Papers were categorized according to application areas, subject titles, publication date, country of origin, academic journals, and integrated methodologies, and are summarized herein by various tables and charts.

The findings show that during the years 2005‐2009, use of the AHP technique has continued to increase exponentially. Moreover, it is expected that ANP will gain more popularity in the future, as the benefits of ANP become better understood. Applications of AHP have been dominant in manufacturing, followed by the environmental management and agriculture field, power and energy industry, transportation industry, construction industry, and healthcare. Other remarkable application fields include education, logistics, e‐business, IT, R&D, telecommunication industry, finance and banking, urban management, defense industry and military, government, marketing, tourism and leisure, archaeology, auditing, and the mining industry.

The study does not consider theoretical based AHP or ANP articles. Also the search excluded conference proceedings, masters' theses, and doctoral dissertations.

It is hoped that this study will guide practitioners in future work towards advancement of these techniques and will help the managers to select better decisions by making use of these methodologies.

The paper presents a comprehensive literature review of recent applications of AHP, and also ANP decision tools over the period 2005‐2009. Furthermore, the paper covers fuzzy AHP and fuzzy ANP extensions that are becoming popular methods in some application areas of traditional AHP and ANP.

In this study, a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach for evaluating airworthiness factors were presented. The purpose of this study is to develop an acceptable rationale for operational activities in civil and military aviation and for design, production and maintenance activities in the aviation industry that can be used in-flight safety programs and evaluations.

In aviation, while the initial and continuing airworthiness of aircraft is related to technical airworthiness, identifying and minimizing risks for avoiding losses and damages are related to operational airworthiness. Thus, the airworthiness factors in civil and military aviation were evaluated under these two categories as the technical and operational airworthiness factors by the analytic hierarchy process and analytic network process. Three technical and five operational airworthiness criteria for civil aviation, three technical and nine operational airworthiness criteria for military aviation were defined, evaluated, prioritized and compared in terms of flight safety.

The most important technical factor is the “airworthiness status of the aircraft” both in civil (81.9%) and military (77.6%) aviation, which means that aircraft should initially be designed for safety. The most significant operational factors are the “air traffic control system” in civil (30.9%) and “threat” in the military (26.6%) aviation. The differences within factor weights may stem from the design requirements and acceptable safety levels (frequency of occurrences 1 in 10⁷ in military and 1 in 10⁹ in civil aircraft design) of civil and military aircraft with the mission achievement requirements in civil and military aviation operations. The damage acceptance criteria for civil and military aircraft are different. The operation risks are accepted in the military and acceptance of specific tasks and the risk levels can vary with aircraft purpose and type.

This study provides an acceptable rationale for safety programs and evaluations in aviation activities. The results of this study can be used in real-world airworthiness applications and safety management by the aviation industry and furthermore, critical factor weights should be considered both in civil and military aviation operations and flights. The safety levels of airlines with respect to our airworthiness factor weights or the safety level of military operations can be computed.

This is the first study considering technical and operational airworthiness factors as an MCDM problem. Originality and value of this paper are defining critical airworthiness factors for civil and military aviation, ranking these factors, revealing the most important ones and using MCDM methods for the evaluations of airworthiness factors for the first time. In civil aviation flight safety is the basic tenet of airworthiness activities in risk analysis, on the other hand in military aviation high levels of risks are to be avoided in peace training or operational tasks. However, even high risks have to be accepted during the war, if the operational requirements impose, as mission achievement is vital. The paper is one of a kind on airworthiness evaluations for flight safety.

This paper investigates the interview examination applied during the admission process of air traffic controller (ATCO) candidates. This paper aims to select the most appropriate candidates by minimizing any shortcomings of the process.

ATCOs have a very important role in the air traffic system. They are responsible for ensuring the safe, regular and rapid flow of aircraft traffic. They carry out this challenging task by monitoring the aircraft under their responsibility and by giving instructions to the pilots when necessary. So the selection of ATCO candidates is of critical importance. This process is usually conducted through multistage examinations. It is a critical issue to use correct methods in the selection process to identify the most suitable candidates. Besides, the application of subjective examination in a standard way and standardization of criteria can assist in selecting the right candidates. Within this context, the analytic network process (ANP) and the rating method are used. The weights of the selection criteria are calculated by the ANP, and the candidates are evaluated by the rating method according to the defined criteria.

39 candidates were ranked using the ANP, and the rankings obtained by the ANP and the current system were compared. The ANP rankings were also compared with the results of a previous study conducted by analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The results indicate that using the ANP yields consistent results with those obtained from the AHP in terms of the rankings.

ATCOs are one of the most important operators in air transport system. They undertake critical tasks where even a small error may cause serious consequences. Therefore, selecting the appropriate candidate is an important first step in training qualified staff. The authors believe that this study will contribute to the training of more qualified ATCOs. On the other hand, the approach about the use of ANP method on the interview examination and the standardization of the criteria can provide insight into improving interview process in different area.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that presents an ANP-based methodology for the selection process of ATCOs and the interview process.

The purpose of this paper is to promote the integration of quality function deployment (QFD) with quantitative methods in an attempt to enhance its effectiveness and resolve issues like the failure of prioritizing customer requirements and determining proper importance levels.

This paper discusses the combination of QFD with analytic hierarchy process‐analytic network process (AHP‐ANP) and DEAHP‐DEANP methodologies to prioritize selection criteria in a service context. DEAHP is a hybrid method, developed by Ramanathan. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is embedded in the AHP methodology and potentially replaces the eigenvalue method. In this paper DEAHP is used for completing the relationship matrix of house of quality (HOQ). Furthermore, in accordance with the DEAHP method, a methodological framework for completing the roof matrix of HOQ is developed, based on DEA and ANP techniques‐DEANP. The implementation of QFD along with the above mentioned quantitative approaches is studied utilizing data from the Greek banking sector, and a comparative analysis is conducted.

The illustrative implementation offers support to the compatibility of the two alternative approaches demonstrating both applicability and ease of use. Results suggest that the QFD‐DEAHP‐DEANP methodology provides superior information since it offers more robust sensitivity analysis outcomes.

The novelty of this research lies in the innovative idea to use QFD in conjunction with DEAHP and in the development of the DEANP method. The proposed methodology is a valuable tool for identifying strategic opportunities and gaining sustainable advantage since it helps service providers to capture the mix of services that customers are expecting them to offer.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the use of two general purpose decision‐making techniques in selecting the most appropriate maintenance strategy for organizations with critical production requirements.

The Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and the Analytical Network Process (ANP) are used for the selection of the most appropriate maintenance strategy in a local newspaper printing facility in Turkey.

The two methods were shown to be effective in choosing a strategy for maintaining the printing machines. The two methods resulted in almost the same results. Both methods take into account the specific requirements of the organization through its own available expertise.

The techniques demonstrated in this paper can be used by all types of organizations for selecting and adopting maintenance strategies that have higher impact on maintenance performance and hence overall business productivity. The two methods are explained in a step‐by‐step approach for easier adaptation by practitioners in all types of organizations.

The value of the paper is in applying AHP and ANP decision‐making methodologies in maintenance strategy selection. These two methods are not very common in the area of maintenance, and hence add to the pool of techniques utilized in selecting maintenance strategies.

This paper presents the employment of the analytic network process (ANP) to select the best site for a shopping mall. ANP is an innovative and robust multicriteria decision‐making (MCDM) method because it can produce a comprehensive analytic framework for solving societal, governmental, and corporate decision problems. Yet, there is a lack of published papers in the construction field demonstrating the method with illustrative examples. In the current paper, it is suggested that ANP is appropriate for shopping mall location selection. An example is therefore demonstrated. In order to explicate the difference between ANP and analytic hierarchy process (AHP), the findings obtained from the two methods are compared. Results of the comparison indicate that ANP is a powerful tool to solve the decision problem if interdependent relationships have substantial impacts in the decision model.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of energy efficiency improvement of Iran building sector and develop strategies based on them and finally prioritize these strategies according to experts’ judgments. This SWOT analysis is developed based on a detailed study in Iran energy market along with consulting with several energy specialists and has not been conducted before.

Since SWOT analysis is not capable to rank the developed strategies, analytical network process method is applied to prioritize them according to experts’ judgments. Results are compared with the results of the hierarchical network process (AHP).

Numerical results show that modification of the energy tariff system is the most important strategy. Besides this strategy, four other ones are related to the role of government in Iran energy market, while the remaining ones can be accomplished by domestic or international companies. They are about worn out appliances, inefficient buildings and inefficient lighting systems.

The SWOT analysis and the developed strategies can provide an insight into the improvement of buildings’ energy efficiency in Iran and some similar countries. All the developed strategies have two sides. One is the regulatory and supporting role of the government and the other is about the investment and implementation considerations. As most of the required rules have been established, the ground is prepared for domestic or international investors to start or develop their energy-related businesses in Iran market.

The aim of this research is to provide an approach for modeling system risk management and to develop an analytic hierarchy process (AHP)-based model for simulating decisions on introducing innovations in air transport systems.

The paper proposes AHP and analytic network process (ANP) methodologies for overcoming fragmentation in risk assessments perceived by risk, budget, quality or schedule managements, and for resolving potential conflicts between safety, efficiency and well-being.

Issues in system risk evaluation and management were identified and transferred to a list of requirements. A generic ANP-based model for system risk management was developed as well as a template for capture of knowledge on risks, including expert knowledge, and for implementation of a new decision-making process as applied to introducing innovation(s).

Since this research addresses evaluation and management of non-event based risks due to innovations in air transport systems, further analysis and re-evaluation of risks is required during and after the implementation in order to provide continuously dynamic representation of system risk.

The results of this study contribute to the development and implementation of a usable version of multi-criteria decision analysis at senior management level. Further, it stimulates mechanism for learning and trade-offs between various stakeholders.

This work is original in that it is cross-disciplinary (e.g. risk management, management of innovation, systems design). It addresses the issue of integrating a safety management system with an overall business management system. Also, it introduces qualitative non-event risk assessments into system risk management. In addition to the use of the AHP-model for system risk management, an implementation model (“risk stakeholder model”) is also developed.

The purpose of this paper is to visualize the prioritization among essential factors of cellular manufacturing system (CMS) implementation using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and analytic network process (ANP) methods.

Based on literature review, 4 enabler dimensions and 17 CM factors were identified which were validated by experts from academia and industry. Then, AHP and ANP models are proposed in evaluating CMS implementation dimensions and factors. The results are validated using sensitivity analysis.

These models give firms a straightforward and simple to utilize way to deal with CMS efficiently. The two strategies were appeared to be powerful in choosing a strategy for CMS implementation. The two strategies brought about nearly similar outcomes. Both methods consider the particular necessities of the organization through its own accessible ability.

The techniques exhibited in this paper can be utilized by a wide range of organizations for adopting CMS that have a higher impact on performance and thus overall productivity. The two techniques are explained in a step-by-step approach for easier adoption by practitioners.

The strength of the present study is that it is one of the first few to be conducted in perspective for CM implementation factors analysis.

The purpose of the paper is to visualize the priorities of important factors towards the status of Industry 4.0 implementation in Indian manufacturing industries by utilizing the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and analytic network process (ANP) techniques.

Based on a review of relevant literature, the authors recognized four criteria and 16 critical factors that have been validated by academic and industry experts. AHP and ANP models are then developed to evaluate the requirements and essential elements of the Industry 4.0 implementation. The outcomes were validated with the aid of sensitivity analysis.

The above models offer the industry a clear and straightforward way to understand the critical factors in the status of Industry 4.0 implementation. The two techniques have emerged to be influential in deciding the status of Industry 4.0 implementation. The two methods yielded almost identical outcomes. Both methods take into account the industry's specific needs based on their available capacity.

Decision-makers and specialists will use the strategies discussed in this paper to effectively include the implementation status of Industry 4.0 in their industries, based on their ability to make arrangements for proper implementation of Industry 4.0 and to concentrate on top priority factors when implementing Industry 4.0 at their workplace.

The contribution of this research is that it is the first to be carried out with a view to both AHP and ANP to analyze important factors regarding the implementation status of Industry 4.0 and authentication through sensitivity analysis methods; this is a recent initiative in Industry 4.0.