1. Introduction

In complex decision making environment, decision making usually involves tangible and intangible multiple criteria and alternatives to choose from. To deal with such qualitative and quantitative factors in multiple criteria decision making (MCDM), in 1970s, Saaty (1978, 1979, 1980) proposed an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Since then, this method has been extensively applied into many real applications, for instance in manufacturing systems (Li and Huang 2009), quality consultants (Cebeci and Ruan 2007), software evaluation (Cebeci 2009; Peng et al. 2011a), supplier evaluation and selection (Akarte et al. 2001; Handfield et al. 2002; Chan 2003; Bayazit 2006; Chamodrakas et al. 2010; Labib 2011), strategy selection (Li and Li 2009; Chen and Wang 2010), weapon selection (Dagdeviren et al. 2009), project selection (Enea and Piazza 2004; Amiri 2010).