Creating a Decision Making Matrix for Four Restaurant Alternatives - Essay Example

Eventually, a two dimensional matrix is generated. Decision matrixes are common in procurement procedures where they are used to choose the best bid among the many proposals that have been received. A decision matrix has four major components which include; criteria, options/alternatives, weights and scores/rating (Hammon, Keeney and Raiffa, 2002). The purpose of this paper is to design a decision matrix and the scores for selecting the best restaurant from among four alternatives A, B, C, D using cost, convenience, service, taste and nutrition as the decision criteria.

Creating the matrix The restaurants A, B, C, and D shall be ranked according to the following five criteria; cost, convenience, service, taste and nutrition. These criteria have been selected since they are the major determining factors ion the final decision making regarding the most suitable restaurant. The weights for the criteria are assigned in such a way that the total weight is 1.0. In this case, the weights for the criteria are as follows; Cost= 0.30, service=0.25, taste=0.2, convenience= 0.

15, nutrition= 0.10. The total for the criteria = 1.0. The criteria ranking for each of the restaurant alternatives A, B, C and D are designed in such a way that the highest rank is 4. The score for each alternative is calculated as follows; Score = (Rating * assigned weight). The total score is obtained from the sum of all the scores. Based on the cost, convenience, service, taste and nutrition criteria, the restaurant options A, B, C, and D are ranked as follows; Criteria Ranking/Ranking Restaurant Options Cost Service Taste Convenience Nutrition A 3 4 1 3 2 B 2 1 2 4 4 C 4 2 3 1 3 D 1 3 4 2 1 The scores are calculated and tabulated as follows; Alternatives A B C D Criteria Weight Rating Score Rating Score Rating Score Rating Score Cost 0.30 3 0.9 2 0.6 4 1.2 1 0.

3 Service 0.25 4 1.0 1 0.25 2 0.5 3 0.75 Taste 0.20 1 0.2 3 0.6 3 0.6 4 0.8 Convenience 0.15 3 0.45 4 0.6 3 0.45 2 0.3 Nutrition 0.10 2 0.2 4 0.4 3 0.3 1 0.1 TOTAL 1.0 13 2.75 14 2.45 15 3.05 11 3.15 NB: Score= Rating* Weight. Explanation of ratings and scores After summing up the ratings for the four restaurant alternatives, alternative C has the highest rating of 15 followed by B with 14 while D has the lowest sum rating of 11. However, when the total scores are calculated from the rating and the weights, D has the highest score of 3.

15 while B has the lowest score of 2.45. The total weighting for the criteria was calculated as 1.0. In terms of the cost criteria, restaurant alternative C attains the highest score of 1.2 while D receives the lowest score with a 0.3 score. In terms of service, alternative A receives the highest score with 1.0 while alternative B receives the lowest score with 0.25. Alternative D scores the highest in terms of the taste criteria with a score of 0.8 while A scores the lowest with 0.2. Alternatives B and C receive the same score in terms of convenience though they differ in other criteria.

Alternative B is the best in terms of convenience with a score of 0.6 while alternative D is the worst with a score of 0.3. Alternative A and C attain the same score in terms of convenience with a score of 0.45. In terms of the nutrition criteria which has the lowest weight among the other criteria, alternative B receives the highest score with 0.4 while alternative D receives the lowest with a 0.1 score. Choosing the best alternative The