A Web-based AHP approach to standardize the process of managing service-contracts

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). (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.