Plan of Analysis: Influencing Parameters

What is inside the General Parameter ...

When you click name of the General Parameter you open list of the parameters influencing this General Parameter. It may looks like this:

General Parameter: Safety

Main	Parameter	Weight	Utility
	Safety Bag	0.5	Utility
	Side Impact System	0.3	Utility
	Top Speed	0.2	Define Utility!

To add more influencing parameters click link "Add Parameter in General Parameter". Than just check parameters on the list and click button "Include..." If you already have some influencing parameters on the list with weights other than 1, than new parameters will be added with zero weight. So not forget to assign proper weight to new parameters, otherwise they will not be considerate in analysis. Also you have to define Utility Function for added parameters.

Weight reflects priority of the parameter. The more weight - the more important this Parameter. To assign weights to the Parameters you can use either direct weighing or pairwise comparisons.

In direct weighing, the weights of Parameters are directly given - just click the weight and input value. You can use any numeric scale: 1 to 5, 1 to 10, 1 to 100 or any other. Later on you can normalize the weights - just click "Normalize" button, and every weight on the list will be devided by the sum of all weights, after that the sum of all weights will be equal to 1. It is not mandatory to normalize the weights.

The more reliable way of weighing the parameters is pairwise comparisons. Just click button "Compare" and answer several questions of the type "Which of these two parameters is more important?", and then the system will calculate and show you the weights. (This approach is based on AHP - The Analytical Hierarchy Process theory by T.Saaty). Along with the weights Consistency Index will be calcullated. If Consistency Index < 0.1 it means that you were quite consistent in your answers.

In the column "Main" system automatically checks the most important parameters (Group of parameters with biggest weight). It will allow to run dominant Pareto analysis separately on a set of the most important parameters. You can manually include parameter in the list of main parameters - just click corresponding box in the column "Main"

If you have group of experts working on the plan of analysis click button "Experts" to input list of experts and their weight coefficients for parameters.

You have not only prioritize the influencing parameters, but also let system know which values of parameter are "good" and which are "bad". Clink link "Utility" or "Define utility" to describe Utility Function for the parameter.