A comparative analysis of MCDM methods based on pairwise comparison: AHP, BWM and FUCOM

MCDM methods based on pairwise comparisons are widely used to determine the weights of alternatives and criteria in complex problems. In this paper, we compare three of these methods: Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Best-Worst method (BWM) and Full Consistency Method (FUCOM). We compared the number of pairwise comparisons required and the amount of information provided by the experts as well as the consistency of the judgments. The data came from a study on the ranking of driving parameters of business and production management in small and medium-sized enterprises. The results show that AHP with the higher requirement of pairwise comparisons also leads to very reliable weights, while a lower number of pairwise comparisons in BWM and FUCOM, as appealing as it is to the experts, could significantly reduce the input data and decisively influence the ranking of items. Our study also disproves the statement repeatedly found in the literature that BWM is more consistent than AHP due to the lower number of pairwise comparisons required. Rather, we have pointed out the problem of measuring inconsistency in BWM. For FUCOM, we have provided explicit formulas for calculating the weights.