A Web-based AHP approach to standardize the process of managing service-contracts [An article from: Decision Support Systems]

This digital document is a journal article from Decision Support Systems, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Despite the gainful use of the Web as a communication medium, recent research suggests that very little work has been done to leverage this new technology for enabling changes in the planning process. This paper, motivated by a situation at a Fortune 100 company, describes a prototype Web-based decision support system (DSS) for the management of service contracts, which are being increasingly purchased by a variety of businesses. The planning for spare parts needed to support service contracts is hampered by unpredictable and extremely low demands, thereby necessitating a subjective manual approach that is inherently non-standardized and non-coordinated among the various constituents of the organization. In this paper, we describe how a Web-based system can enable the standardization of the process of managing and supporting service contracts. In addition, our DSS supports geographically and functionally dispersed decision-making roles, thereby displaying characteristics of an organizational decision support system (ODSS).