INVITED SPEAKER

AHP and Simulation: Two Winning Methodologies Combined Together

Dr. Fabio De Felice
University of Cassino, Italy

Abstract

Decision making is a central activity of all people, usually done so automatically that we do not even realize that we are doing it every moment of every day of every year for all our lives.
This silent and inarticulate approach has worked well for us when humanity was fragmented and individuals and groups of people did what they thought of without having to think of others very much.
It is necessary a proper approach to help decision makers to define the right decision. In fact many circumstances make difficult decision making process.
Likewise, when a group of decision makers cannot arrive at a consensus regarding a judgment, some members of the group may simply lose confidence in the overall synthesis if they lack faith in some of the judgments. The Analytic Hierarchy Process utilizes point estimates in order to derive the relative weights of criteria, sub-criteria, and alternatives which govern a decision problem. With the AHP the overall prioritization of a set of alternatives to a problem can be synthesized from all stated pairwise relationships.
From this point of view the aim of the speech is to present a novel approach that integrates the Analytic Hierarchy Process and simulation technique in order to fill up the lack of a coherent procedure to make decisions and because is especially troublesome when neither logic nor intuition are of help to determine which of several options is the most desirable, or the least objectionable.

Biography of the Invited Speaker

Fabio De Felice, Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Cassino (Italy), board member of several international organizations and responsible for scientific research and training in industrial plants.
The scientific activity developed through studies and researches on problems concerning industrial plant engineering. Such activity ranges over all fields from improvement of quality in productive processes to the simulation of industrial plants, from support multicriteria techniques to decisions (Analytic Hierarchy Process, Analytic Network Process), to RAMS Analysis and Human Reliability Analysis. The main university courses in which he is involved are: Safety of Industrial Plants, Industrial Production Management, Industrial Simulation, Human Reliability Analysis.
He is author of several books, and papers in international journals and conference proceedings. He has also been a member of several editorial boards. In addition he is founder of the AHP Academy - International Association for the promotion of multi-criteria decision making methods.