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The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytic hierarchy planning-based framework to establish criteria weights and to develop a school performance system commonly called school inspections.

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model uses pairwise comparisons and a measurement scale to generate the weights for the criteria. The validity of the approach is confirmed by comparing the outputs of school inspection and the outputs of the model in a sample of schools.

The framework proposed enables school management to address several issues pertaining to its competitive advantage with other schools, the two most important being establishing its performance ranking in the marketplace and identifying the service elements that most require improvement. This study develops a cohesive approach to identify which quality attributes or dimensions require attention.

For school inspections, the data collection and computational problems would increase with the increase in the number of criteria and sub-criteria, as well as the number of schools considered in the selection. Although the range of reported AHP applications is extensive in many disciplines, examples in school quality and inspection remain still rare; as a result, this study could not compare its results with other AHP applications in school inspection or assessment.

The AHP method has the distinct advantage that it decomposes a decision problem into its constituent parts and builds hierarchies of criteria. AHP enables assessors to capture both subjective and objective evaluation measures of school quality. By providing a useful mechanism for assessing the consistency of the evaluation measures and alternatives, the AHP reduces bias in decision making.

The AHP model also provides a more systematic evaluation of a given school’s qualitative performance criteria. The proposed AHP model is attractive to assessors and decision makers because its pairwise comparison procedure enables them to offer a relative (rather than absolute) individual criterion assessment on those qualitative factors.

The AHP model could become a sustainable component of overall school system quality improvement by maturing over time. The AHP annual scores could be used as realistic and measureable gauges for measuring school improvement.

Effective management of projects is becoming increasingly important for any type of organization to remain competitive in today’s dynamic business environment due to pressure of globalization. The use of benchmarking is widening as a technique for supporting project management. Benchmarking can be described as the search for the best practices, leading to the superior performance of an organization. However, effectiveness of benchmarking depends on the use of tools for collecting and analyzing information and deriving subsequent improvement projects. This study demonstrates how analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a multiple attribute decision‐making technique, can be used for benchmarking project management practices. The entire methodology has been applied to benchmark project management practice of Caribbean public sector organizations with organizations in the Indian petroleum sector, organizations in the infrastructure sector of Thailand and the UK. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of a proposed benchmarking model using AHP, determines problems and issues of Caribbean project management in the public sector and suggests improvement measures for effective project management.

The purpose of the paper is to develop an integrated framework for performance management of healthcare services.

This study develops a performance management framework for healthcare services using a combined analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and logical framework (LOGFRAME). The framework is then applied to the intensive care units of three different hospitals in developing nations. Numerous focus group discussions were undertaken, involving experts from the specific area under investigation.

The study reveals that a combination of outcome, structure and process‐based critical success factors and a combined AHP and LOGFRAME‐based performance management framework helps manage performance of healthcare services.

The proposed framework could be practiced in hospital‐based healthcare services.

The conventional approaches to healthcare performance management are either outcome‐based or process‐based, which cannot reveal improvement measures appropriately in order to assure superior performance. Additionally, they lack planning, implementing and evaluating improvement projects that are identified from performance measurement. This study presents an integrated approach to performance measurement and implementing framework of improvement projects.

The main purpose of this study is to provide some empirical evidence to support the consistency measure as an essential component in the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), which is known to be a research method useful to both decision making and empirical research in construction information and management. The measure helps to affirm that individual decision makers capture logical and reasonable preferences when making decisions. It also supports empirical research conducted by either practitioners or academic researchers to ensure that the questionnaires are not poorly answered. Measure of the consistency level is expected to be able to detect inconsistent responses. In this study, strategies have been adopted to compare the AHP with the simple rating method to justify the criticality of consistency using data from a study of construction supply chain information. Three groups of responses (overall, consistent and inconsistent) based on the consistency measure were compared. Results indicate that responses to the AHP method having acceptable consistency (the consistent group) were shown to be consistent with the responses from the simple rating method. This supports that the consistent responses are reliable. Suggestions are given to improve the undertaking of AHP research.

Customization is a difficult task for many organizations implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The purpose of this paper is to develop a new framework based on customers’ requirements to examine the ERP customization choices for the enterprise. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique has been applied complementarily with this framework to prioritize ERP customization choices.

Based on empirical literature, the paper proposed an ERP customization framework anchored on the customer's requirements. A case study research method was used to evaluate the applicability of the framework in a real-life setting. In a case study with 15 practitioners working on the vendor's and the client's sides in an ERP implementation, the paper applied the framework jointly with the AHP technique to prioritize the feasible customization choices for ERP implementation.

The paper demonstrates the applicability of the framework in identifying the various feasible choices for the client organization to consider when they decide to customize their selected ERP product.

Further case studies need to be carried out in various contexts to acquire knowledge about the generalizability of the observations. This will also contribute to refining the proposed ERP customization framework.

Very few literature sources suggest methods for exploring and evaluating customization options in ERP projects from requirements engineering perspective. The proposed framework helps practitioners and consultants anchor the customization decisions on the customer's requirements and use a well-established prioritization technique, AHP, to identify the feasible customization choices for the implementing enterprise.

No previously published research studies provide an approach to prioritize customization choices for ERP anchored on the customer's requirements.

The use of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is an effective way to deal with qualitative decision areas of operations management. Four published applications of AHP are briefly reviewed in forecasting, supplier selection, facility location, and choice of technology. Furthermore, four more potential applications are suggested in other areas of operations management, including product design, plant layout, maintenance frequency selection, and choice of logistic carrier. In addition, suggestions for other areas of research are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a good insight into the use of fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (fuzzy AHP) approach that is a multi‐criteria decision‐making methodology in evaluating the benefits of information‐sharing decision problems.

In this study, the integration of AHP with the fuzzy synthetic extent analysis method (fuzzy AHP) is proposed in evaluating the benefits of information‐sharing decision problems as a framework to guide managers.

Findings demonstrate that the customer requirement and operational information alternatives are the preferred key decisions, which all supply chain partners might agree to share with one another. Further, it can also be concluded that the planning and financial information alternatives have almost the same importance.

Fuzzy AHP is a highly complex methodology and requires more numerical calculations in assessing composite priorities than the traditional AHP and hence it increases the effort. In addition, fuzzy methodology could be extended with the other multi‐criteria decision‐making (MCDM) methods such as Analytical Network Process (ANP), TOPSIS, ELECTRE and DEA techniques in solving such a problem.

There is a lack of research in the literature to deal directly with the uncertainty of human judgements in evaluating the benefits of various information‐sharing decisions in a supply chain. Therefore, fuzzy AHP is an appropriate methodology to select the various types of information and has the ability to be used as a decision‐making analysis tool since it handles uncertain and imprecise data. In addition, the paper is especially of interest to managers as they make decisions on which types of information they should share with their supply chain partners.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrated approach that prioritizes organizational key performance indicators (KPIs) in terms of the criteria of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time‐sensitive) goal setting.

The research was carried out using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique as the basis for pairwise comparisons of SMART criteria, considering each KPI.

A new approach is outlined, encompassing step‐by‐step guidelines for decision makers to conduct the prioritization process of SMART KPIs. The results of the case study highlight the applicability of the proposed approach and the calculation process for prioritizing KPIs.

The rating scales used in the AHP analysis are conceptual; although it identifies which dimensions require improvement, the proposed approach does not provide guidance on an appropriate action plan to address deficiencies; another limitation is that the framework adopted only the SERVQUAL service dimensions.

This paper gives a novel approach for prioritization of KPIs. The proposed approach has a holistic mechanism; it could empower decision‐making teams; it is capable of enhancing advanced quality engineering approaches; and provides great opportunities for future research.

Develops a strategic planning framework for long‐range marketing policy making. Uses this framework to explore the relationship between marketing orientation and total quality management and extends Kotler′s model of three types of marketing strategic orientation on the perspective of total quality management. Uses two group consensus management techniques (quality function deployment and analytic hierarchy process) and competitive benchmarking to demonstrate how a particular company can make a decision on which strategic marketing orientation to adopt. Furthermore, shows how a company can evaluate itself relative to its competitors on the basis of strategic marketing orientation.

Internet of things (IoT) and big data (BD) could change how the societies function. This paper explores the role of IoT and BD and their impact on customer relationship management (CRM) investments in modern customer service. The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytic hierarchy planning framework to establish criteria weights and to develop a general self-assessment model for determining the most important factors influencing the IoT and BD investment in CRM. The authors found that most studies have focused on conceptualizing the impact of IoT without BD and with limited empirical studies and analytical models. This paper sheds further light on the topic by presenting both IoT and BD aspects of future CRM.

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methodology is used to weight and prioritize the factors influencing the IoT and BD investment in modern CRM in the service industry. The AHP framework resulted in a ranking of 21 sustainability sub-factors based on evaluations by experienced information technology and customer service professionals.

The paper provides significant insight on the new frontier of CRM, focusing on the use of IoT and BD and the respective solutions to address them were identified. This study primarily contributes in providing the process of effectively managing and implementing IoT and BD in big businesses by identifying the connecting link between firms and customers.

The understanding of new frontier of CRM connective via IoT and BD can solve the dilemmas and challenges linked to the practice of implement IoT and BD in the information systems field. The study provides valuable information and critical analysis of IoT and BD with regard to the integration of CRM. Finally, this study further provides directions for future researchers.

IoT and BD are a growing phenomenon, which business decision-makers and information professionals need to consider seriously to properly ascertain the modern CRM dimensions in the digital economies. They also should embrace the proper CRM innovation, which is powered by IoT and BD, and discover how IoT and BD can bring the next level of maturity to CRM “CRM of everything.”