¹Kun-Shan University, Tainan, Taiwan, ROC

Correspondence: C-C Lin, Department of Information Management, Kun-Shan University, Yung-Kang City, Tainan 710, Taiwan, ROC. E-mail: chanclin@ms29.hinet.net

Received October 2003; Accepted September 2005; Published online 28 December 2005.

Abstract

Generating priority vectors from pairwise comparison matrices is an essential part of the analytical hierarchy process. Besides the well-known right eigenvector method and the logarithmic least squares method, Bryson proposed a goal programming method (GPM) for achieving the above. Although the GPM always obtains an optimal solution, this study shows the existence of concealed alternative optimal solutions that might lead to different priority vectors. This study proposed a GPM for overcoming the problem of alternative optimal solution. In contrast with the GPM, the proposed method obtains a unique optimal solution and performs better in various aspects.