Removing Inconsistency in Pairwise Comparisons Matrix in the AHP

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) allows to create a final ranking for a discrete set of decision variants on the basis of an earlier pairwise comparison of all the criteria and all the decision variants within each criterion. The properties of the obtained ranking depend on the quality of pairwise comparisons; this quality can be evaluated on the basis of consistency measured by means of certain measures. The paper discusses a mathematical model which is the foundation of the AHP and a starting point for a new method which allows to significantly reduce – and even eliminate – the inconsistency of pairwise comparisons measured by the consistency index. The proposed method allows to reduce the consistency index well below the threshold of 0.1.