Application of Combined SWOT and AHP: A Case Study for a Manufacturing Firm

Abstract

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis is a commonly used tool which examines strengths and weaknesses (internal factors) of a company or industry together with opportunities and threats (external factors) of the marketplace environment. SWOT analysis provides the basic outline in which to perform analysis of decision situations. In this study, the lack of determination of the importance ranking for the SWOT factors, we proposed to enhance SWOT analysis with multicriteria decision making technique called Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). AHP approach achieves pairwise comparisons among factors or criteria in order to prioritize them using the eigenvalue calculation. The aim of applying the combined method is to improve the quantitative side of strategic planning.