A multi-attribute comparison of Turkish quality consultants by fuzzy AHP

Quality consultants are used in ISO 9000 implementation projects especially by many small and medium-sized enterprises. Clients do not always appreciate differences between quality consultants. This paper aims to provide an analytical tool to select the best quality consultant providing the most customer satisfaction. The clients of three Turkish quality consultancy firms were interviewed and the most important criteria taken into account by the clients while they were selecting their consultancy firms were determined by a designed questionnaire. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process was applied to compare these consultancy firms. The means of the triangular fuzzy numbers produced by the customers and experts for each comparison were successfully used in the pair wise comparison matrices.