Quality-risk decision modeling in Bangladesh’s leather industry: a diagnostic audit of pareto-style screening and spherical fuzzy AHP

Quality-risk decision models require traceable links between reported judgments, numerical priorities and managerial recommendations. This single-case study audits retained assessment summaries from 40 export-oriented leather and footwear firms in Bangladesh and one reported spherical fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (SF-AHP) decision model. Descriptive screening reproduces fourteen item totals, while a computational audit compares five criterion weights and three strategy scores. Communication, compliance, resource costing and equipment monitoring account for 41.12% of the reported total; unknown scoring polarity prevents interpreting this as risk prevalence. Reported-weight scenario R yields scores of 0.301, 0.339 and 0.360 for compliance systems (A1), training and technology (A2), and communication and monitoring (A3). Direct Score Index reconstruction from retained group marks defines diagnostic scenario D, with consistency ratio 0.085186. Using identical local priorities, D yields 0.519, 0.238 and 0.243 and changes the leader to A1. Linear interpolation switches first place at t = 0.176008. Exact attribution identifies the criterion-weight shifts driving the reversal, and a conservative rounding bound rules out three-decimal display precision as its explanation. Paired simulations and criterion deletions remain conditional on their inputs. The contribution is a reproducible diagnosis of one consequential discrepancy, using established techniques. Neither scenario verifies the original seven-expert fuzzy aggregation or establishes an empirical strategy winner. The case distinguishes reproducible arithmetic, verifiable input provenance and empirically justified recommendations without treating one as evidence of the others.