1、中文 2512 字 A fuzzy AHP and BSC approach for evaluating performance of IT department in the manufacturing industry in Taiwan1 Abstract In this ever-changing world, information technology (IT) is a must for the survival of a company, and the functions of IT department is becoming increasin
2、gly important. The assessment of IT department is critical to understand how the department contributes to organizational and strategic goals. Because IT department performs many tasks that cannot simply be measured by monetary units, evaluation methods that solely rely on financial measures are not
3、 adequate. The objective of this study is to construct an approach based on the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and balanced scorecard (BSC) for evaluating an IT department in the manufacturing industry in Taiwan. The BSC concept is applied to define the hierarchy with four major perspective
4、s (i.e. financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth), and performance indicators are selected for each perspective. A fuzzy AHP (FAHP) approach is then proposed in order to tolerate vagueness and ambiguity of information. A FAHP information system is finally constructed t
5、o facilitate the solving process. The results provide guidance to IT departments in the manufacturing industry in Taiwan regarding strategies for improving department performance. The constructed information system is suggested to be a good tool for solving other multiple-criteria decision-making pr
6、oblems. 1. Introduction Information technology (IT) involves computers, software and services, but good IT must synthesize these elements to achieve the goal of an organization. As a demand to collect, process, store, and disseminate information grows, the functions of IT department is becomin
7、g increasingly important. Although businesses invest huge amount of intellectual and financial capital in a range of communication and information technologies and services, the results of some surveys revealed that some companies have started to freeze IT budgets because there are insufficient evid
8、ence of a return from the investments and IT applications seem to be simply a black hole (Martinsons, Davison, & Tse, 1999). The reason behind is that it is difficult for managers to demonstrate tangible returns on the resources expended to plan, develop, implement and operate computer-based inf
9、ormation system (IS). Some frequently asked questions by the organizations are whether the investment in IT/IS is really worthwhile, whether the implemented IT application is a success, and whether the IT department functions productively. The measurement of the value of IT and the evaluation of IS
10、performance, thus, become of great importance to managers. Many 1 来源： A.H.I. Lee et al. / Expert Systems
11、 with Applications 34 (2008) 96 107 methods and techniques have been suggested over the years to evaluate the investments in IT/IS or the performance of IT departments. However, well-known financial measures such as return on investment (ROI), internal rate
12、of return (IRR), net present value (NPV) and payback period have been demonstrated to be inadequate (Abran & Buglione, 2003). In the assessment of IT/IS investments or departments, it is critical to understand how IT/IS contribute to organizational and strategic goals, and Many methods and techn
13、iques have been suggested over the years to evaluate the investments in IT/IS or the performance of IT departments. and evaluation methods that rely on financial measures alone are not suitable for IT applications. The balanced scorecard (BSC), a performance measurement framework that provides an in
14、tegrated look at the business performance of a company by a set of both financial and non-financial measures, seems to be a good solution. However, conventional BSC does not consolidate these performance measures, and an incorporation of BSC and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is an improvement. Si
15、nce fuzziness and vagueness are common characteristics in many decision-making problems, a fuzzy AHP (FAHP) and BSC method should be able to tolerate vagueness or ambiguity, and therefore, is proposed in this research. 2. The balanced scorecard (BSC) and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) &
16、nbsp;Focusing exclusively on traditional financial accounting measures, such as return on investment and payback period, has implications, and has been criticized as the root cause for many problems in industries (Hafeez, Zhang, &Malak, 2002). As managers stress on short-term financial performan
17、ce metrics, they have a tendency to trade off actions, such as new product development, process improvements, human resource development, information technology and customer and market development that can bring in long-term benefits, for current profitability, and this limits the investments with f
18、uture growth opportunities (Banker, Chang, Janakiraman, & Konstans, 2004). Such actions of managers are a consequence of poorly designed performance measurement systems that only focus on short-term financial performance. In the attempt to solve the problem by supplementing financial measures wi
19、th additional measures that can help evaluate the longterm performance of a firm, Kaplan and Norton introduced the BSC, a performance measurement framework that provides an integrated look at the business performance of a company by a set of measures, which includes both financial and non-financial
20、metrics (Kaplan & Norton, 1992； Kaplan & Norton, 1993； Kaplan & Norton, 1996a). The name of BSC is with the intent to keep score of a set of measures that maintain a balance between short- and long-term objectives, between financial and non-financial measures, between lagging and leading
21、 indicators, and between internal and external performance perspectives (Kaplan & Norton, 1996b). Of the BSC s four performance perspectives, one is a traditional financial performance group of items, and the other three involve non-financial performance measurement indexes: customer, inte
22、rnal business process, and learning and growth. The four perspectives are explained briefly as follows (Kaplan & Norton, 1996b): The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was first introduced by Saaty in 1971 to solve the scarce resources allocation and planning needs for the military (Saaty, 1
23、980). Since its introduction, the AHP has become one of the most widely used multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods, and has been used to solve unstructured problems in different areas of human needs and interests, such as political, economic, social and management sciences. The procedures
24、 of the AHP involve six essential steps (Cheng, 1999； Chi & Kuo, 2001； Kang & Lee, 2006； Lee, Kang, & Wang, 2006； Murtaza, 2003； Zahedi, 1986): 1. Define the unstructured problem and state clearly the objectives and outcomes. 2. Decompose the complex problem into a hierarchical structure
25、 with decision elements (criteria, detailed criteria and alternatives). 3. Employ pairwise comparisons among decision elements and form comparison matrices. 4. Use the eigenvalue method to estimate the relative weights of the decision elements. 5. Check the consistency property of matrices to ensure
26、 that the judgments of decision makers are consistent. 6. Aggregate the relative weights of decision elements to obtain an overall rating for the alternatives. 3. Conclusions This paper proposes an approach based on the FAHP and BSC for evaluating the performance of IT department in the
27、 manufacturing industry in Taiwan. The analytic hierarchy is structured by the four major perspectives of the BSC including financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth, followed by performance indicators. Because human decision-making process usually contains fuzziness an
28、d vagueness, the FAHP is adopted to solve the problem. A well-organized FAHP information system is constructed to facilitate the solving process. The results show that customer (0.378) and internal business process (0.299) have higher weightings. This indicates that providing services to users and p
29、romoting internal business process improvement should be stressed by IT departments. For the performance indicators, accuracy and timeliness of information (0.165), internal satisfaction (0.098) and average capacity and stability of the system (0.095) are the most important factors
30、 to be focused on. Some distinguished contributions of this research are as follows: 1. This research adopts the concept of the BSC to develop a performance evaluation structure for IT department in the manufacturing industry. Based on literature review and interview with experts in IT field,
31、we finalize with fourteen most important performance indicators for IT departments. These indicators can be a reference for IT departments in performance evaluation. 2. This research bases on the fuzzy set theory and the AHP to propose a systematic performance evaluation model to provide guidance to
32、 IT department managers regarding performance evaluation and strategies for improving department performance. 3. A FAHP IS is constructed to assist the calculation of appropriate weightings for performance evaluation in IT department. An IT department can adopt this IS for routine performance
33、evaluation of the department. On top of that, this IS is very user-friendly and can also be used for solving general MCDM problems with fuzzy nature in real practice and in research. Coding knowledge is not required for using this IS. The user only needs some basic knowledge of conventional AHP to construct the hierarchy and input the questionnaire, and the results can be obtained by clicking the icons. On the other hand, the IS can be easily altered by modifying the logic behind to adopt different FAHP models = http:/doc-7926921.html;
