AFBE 2013 CONFERENCE PAPERS (CBS) ISSN

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1 AFBE 2013 CONFERENCE PAPERS (CBS) ISSN

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Regina Huang, Brian Sheehan, Management Education at The Cross Roads (China) (Keynote Address) Indranil Ghosh, Pranab K. Dan, Goutam Sengupta, A Fuzzy Set Theoretic Approachto Evaluate Weights of Customer Requirements for Product Designing Subhasis Ray, Chief Data Officer (CDO) - A Necessity in The Realm of Big Data Brian Sheehan, Management Education at The Crossroads: The Case of Thailand Ajith Panichukunnath, Marketing Framework for The 21st Century 50 Chairy, The Effect of Personal Factors on Corporate Entrepreneurship 64 Egan Janitra, Felisma Choirunnisa, Wahdi Salisi April Yudhi, Introducing Advantages of Gold Dinar in Economic System: Case In Indonesia Subrato Bradury, Directional Move Towards Other Income After Liberalization : Is It A Risky Strategic Marketing Shift For Indian Commercial Banks? Venia Prissy Ramadhani, Abdil Fadhil Ridho, Wahdi Salasi April Yudhi, Islamic Economic Challenge: Profound Review of Islamic Banking Due to Dual Banking System in Indonesia Sudeep Chatterjee, An Exploratory Study on Impact of Country of Origin & Company Image on Brand Equity Joko Utomo, Marthin Nanere, The Effect Of Role Ambiguity And Role Conflict On Job Satisfaction And Performance: A Case From Central Java, Indonesia Shiv Shankar Tripathi, Directed Innovation in an Emerging Market:Is It Sustainable? Mou Mukherjee-Das, Paradigm Shift in The Concept of Business Communication and Entertainment Tracing The Behavioural Pattern of Television Audience Users in India Chris Perryer, A Cross-Country Comparison of Ethical Attitudes in Business: Australia, Singapore, The Philippines, Rwanda, And Ethiopia Pinaki Ranjan Bhattacharyya, Sanjana Mandol, Academic Quality Excellence of B-Schools: An Analytical Study I

3 Sujay Kumar Dhar, Paradigm Change in Management Education in India 202 Chris Perryer, Introduction to The Panel Discussion 216 Satadru Chakraborty, Impact of Globilization on Human Resource Management Practices in Emerging Nations of South East Asia: A Case Study of India and Pakistan Chris Perryer, Culture Bridge Australia Consulting, Understanding, Assessing and Managing Risk in International Operations (Keynote Address) Pratik Dutta, An Analysis of FDI Impact in Retailing in China and Its Future in India Habiba Hussain, Emotional Intelligence: The Key to Facilitate 21st Century Learning II

4 MANAGEMENT EDUCATION AT THE CROSS ROADS (CHINA) (KEYNOTE ADDRESS) Dr. Regina Huang, Vice-Dean, School of Business East China University of Science & Technology, (ECUST), Vice President, AFBE, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, P.R.China Professor Brian Sheehan, President, AFBE, 58 Paholyotin Road, SoiPayolyotin 55, Yak 6, Bangkhen, Bangkok, Thailand. ABSTRACT There have been rapid developments in all areas of education in China, particularly, in recent years, however, the development of Management Education in particular, has received considerable attention. This paper endeavors to concentrate briefly on past developments but then to move on to discuss the present and potential future of Management Education in China, to some extent using ECUST as a case study. INTRODUCTION PART 1 : CHINESE MANAGEMENT EDUCATION FIGURE 1: DEVELOPMENT OF MANAGEMENT EDUCATION IN CHINA 1979-present Stage I Stage II Stage III Stage I : Passive Learning of Marxism Principles 1

5 Two Prototypes People suniversity Trained officials Studied MarxistLeninist Political/economic concepts Harbin Polytechnic Institute Developed economic engineers Applied highlyengineeringoriented curriculum Management knowledge was regarded as objective subjects which could be learned through lecturing and passive learning. Degrees in management departments or schools were offered only in the area of Management Science & Engineering Stage II: Near to none Cultural Revolution Universities and colleges were closed down Management development programs were excluded from the Stage III: 1979-present Setting up, learning and mushrooming 1980 Early 1990's 1990 The first China-West joint management training project was established Management programs were restored or established in around 400 universities and colleges, among which at least 40 universities had their own management/ The State Education Commission authorized 9 universities to run China s MBA programs on an experimental basis Current Situation Supply of Management Talents A National MBA Education Guiding Committee was established under the State Ed ti C i i In-school students of business schools in 2011 :3.43 million (23% of all in-school students) Intakes majoring in management in 2011: 353,312 Enrolled MBAs in 2011: 35,777 2

6 Graduates majoring in management in 2011: 523,095 MBA graduates by 2011: 142,421 Business schools offering MBA programs in 2012 : 270 FIGURE 2: MBA PROGRAMS: TYPES CONSIDERED Source: corporate-mbacom-registents-survey DEMAND FOR MANAGEMENT TALENT National Program for Medium and Long-Term Talent Development t 35 million by 2015, 42 million by 2020 Employer demands for MBA hires in 2012 exceeds the global average. A greater proportion of Chinese employers plan to hire MBAs in 2012 compared with those hiring MBAs in

7 TABLE 1: PERCENTAGE OF COMPANIES IN CHINA WHO HIRED MAINLY BUSINESS GRADUATES IN 2011 OR PLANNED TO HIRE BUSINESS GRADUATES IN 2012 Chinese Employers All Employers Actual Hires, 2011 Projected Hires, 2012 Actual Hires, 2011 Projected Hires, 2012 MBA 70% 86% 72% 79% Master in Management Master of Accounting Other business master's Nonbusiness master's 68% 80% 35% 41% 58% 70% 29% 35% 65% 65% 43% 47% 70% 67% 47% 52% Bachelor's 70% 83% 76% 77% Experienced industry hires 82% 94% 79% 82% Source: corporate-recruiters-survey-survey Internationalization Vs. Localization THE GAP Academic Orientation Vs. Professional Orientation 4

8 International Accreditation Vs. National Evaluation FIGURE 3: INTERNATIONALIZATION OF CHINESE MANAGEMENT EDUCATION Internationalization of Curriculum Mission Internationalization of Faculty International Program International Collaboration Ideal Curriculum Multidisciplinary integration Experiential learning Soft-skill development Global perspective Information technology Ethics and corporate responsibility Curriculum Current Curriculum Much of the knowledge base is imported from the west Most core courses of China's programs appear identical L l k l d Management theories from western countries have helped China set up a management educational system in universities and colleges There is a huge gap between those theories and management practice and the work environment in China 5

9 FIGURE 4: INCREASING PERCENTAGE OF INTERNATIONAL FACULTY IS PARTICIPATING IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION IN CHINA Facult y Chinese faculty with overseas education background Some have little business experience and thus are unlikely to offer students practical knowledge International faculty has less Chinese Business knowledge the Overuse has been challenged for insufficient coverage of Chinese local context 6

10 International cooperation International exchange Mode Dual/double degree program Short-term visits/study tour Opportunities for International learning experience are limited 44% of Chinese business schools claim to have international cooperation in their MBA programs while only 17% of all are able to provide overseas exchange opportunities TABLE 2: INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS Number of international intakes in management in China International intakes Percentage of all students , % , % 7

11 , % , % International Program Limited number of international MBA programs 11% of Chinese business schools are able to offer MBA programs in English 5% of Chinese business schools Limited number of enrollment in international 6% of annual MBA enrollment has access to international MBA programs Many International MBA programs t bl t it bl TABLE 3: ACADEMIC ORIENTED Vs. PROFESSIONAL ORIENTATION 8

12 Problems of Academic-oriented Education TABLE 4: PROBLEMS OF ACADEMIC ORIENTED EDUCATION Leadership- Management Continuum Percentage of Chinese Employers Innovate Implement 53% 47% Effect change Control work flow 43% 57% 9

13 Enhance effectiveness Improve efficiencies 57% 43% Manage people Manage tasks 30% 70% Take risks Minimize risks 43% 57% Ask why Ask how 53% 47% Inspire others Solve Problems 47% 53% Set goals Accomplish goals 30% 70% Facilitate direction Plan details 57% 43% Source: Leadership & Management SkillsEmployers Seek in Graduate Business Hires as Ideal candidate profiles Employees who can manage tasks and solve problems Employees who can lead and inspire people 10

14 TABLE 5: THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN WHAT IS ON OFFER AND WHAT BUSINESS NEEDS Management Education Accreditation Mission-driven accreditation standards force businessschools to clearly articulate their purpose and strategy Accreditation process help business schools to achievetheir clarity AMBA accreditation Main International Accreditation bodies: AACSB International (USA) EQUIS (Europe) AMBA (UK) There are a number of other International and National Accredition Agencies, including the AFBE Accreditation and Audit Process International Accreditation helps business schools to integrate in the international standards helps to improve program quality and administrationas benchmarking international standards helps to set up a good reputation in the internationalmarket 11

15 FIGURE 5: MBA SCHOOLS BY COUNTRY ACCREDITED BY ALL THREE INTERNATIONAL ACCREDITATION BODIES : Triple-Accredited Business Schools by Country Only 16 Chinese business schools hold accreditations from international accreditation bodies 12

16 TABLE 6 BUSINESS SCHOOLS HOLDING MORE THAN ONE ACCREDITATION School Accreditation system China Europe International Business School AACSB, EQUIS School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University AASCB, EQUIS School of Management, Fudan University AASCB, EQUIS Lingnan College, Sun Yat-sen University AMBA, EQUIS Antai College of Economics & Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University AASCB, AMBA, EQUIS Source: 13

17 FIGURE 6: WHEN SELECTING SCHOOLS, CHINESE STUDENTS CONSIDER ACCREDITATION AND CURRICULUM TO BE THE LEAST IMPORTANT FACTORSt Source: National MBA Supervisory Committee Direct and coordinate MBA education nationwide Promote the link and collaboration between MBAfaculty and business people as well as international exchange Facilitate the level of MBA graduate education Considerations for To Be or Not to Be Costly and time-consuming in pursuing international accreditation Lack of the globally recognized accreditationsystem in China o Number of the recruitment each year is quota-based by MOE o Candidates don t really understand accreditation o National Media has less/no talk on international accreditation 14

18 PART 2: CASE STUDY : EAST CHINA UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (ECUST) SCHOOL OF BUSINESS School established in 1990 with three disciplines Applied Economics Management Science and Engineering Business Administration Five Departments Department of Management Science and Engineering Department of Business Administration Department of Accounting Department of Economics Department of Finance MBA program offered in 1998, EMBA in 2009 FIGURE 7: MBA PROGRAMS OFFERED 15

19 INTERNATIONALIZATION OF ECUST MBA PROGRAM International Cooperation The school establish educational cooperation links with around 20 universities in Europe, the US, Australia, Latin America and Asia FIGURE 8: MAIN PARTNER SCHOOLS BY WORLD REGION International Cooperation IMBA Double Degree Program French Business School (formerly ESCEM) (France) Student exchanges programs with University of Hamburg (Germany) University of Michigan, Flint (USA) Missouri State University (USA) The MIEX Program (Master of International Management) ICN Business School (France) University of Bologna (Italy ) University of Uppsala (Sweden) MGIMO University (Russia ) 16

20 La Salle University ( Mexico) East China University of Science & Technology (China) Other expanding international cooperationinvolve US, British and French institutions: Lehigh University (Pennsylvania)(US) The University of Utah (US) Linnaeus University (Sweden) Plymouth University (UK) Several French Business Schools FIGURE 9: INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS Number of international students in School in 2012 The mixture of Chinese students and international students in the same classes is beneficial to both groups especially Chinese students who represent the majority of the class International MBA Program(IMBA) Full-time IMBA program Runs in cooperation with the MIEX consortium, the University of Hamburg, and other partner universities worldwide Ends with a double-degree option Part-time IMBA program Sino-French double degree program between ECUST and FBS 17

21 University of Canberra - ECUST joint MBA program International Faculty Sixteen new foreign faculty members in the last three years Increasing share of faculty with PhD degrees from overseas Boost school's research capabilities Enhance school's teaching quality Increase in recruiting international faculty is a positive development But... It needs to be accompanied by appropriate faculty development to introduce the new staff members to the specifics of the Chinese business environment and practice ECUST MBA Features Action Learning Program(an educational process whereby people work and learn together by tackling real issues and reflecting on their actions). Students use the industry they work in as the subject of their projects Four courses utilise heavily Action Learning Thirty faculty members are involved in Action Learning Around 20% of MBA student are enrolled in a three-month Action Learning practice ECUST MBA Features Living Case study Develop a performance evaluation system encouraging professors to provide consulting services to companies and develop MBA case studies (see Chinese case studies: https//chinesecasestudies.blogspot.com) Serve as the basis for developing practically-oriented research Professional Orientation of ECUST MBA Program MBA Career Center 18

22 o Career development mentor system, lectures on career development o Survey of the MBA freshmen, and employers satisfaction in each year MBA HR Club o Help students improve their interviewing skills through peer-to-peer interaction MBA Alumni Center o Work together with the School Alumni Center o Provide alumni a life long learning opportunity with free access to the public talks and forums, EDP programs o Club/associations with different interests, CSR activities with some cherished events o Linkage between the businesses and the School s development International Accreditation AMBA accreditation process 2009Preparing for accreditation, Assessment 2011 awarded 1 year accreditation 2012 awarded 5 year accreditation 2013 CAAMBA accreditation Preparisons, Assessment 2009 EFMD Full membership To try to obtain or not try to obtain EQUIS and AACSB Accreditation? International Accreditation Accreditation promote School in the process of Enhancing its distinctiveness by focusing on chemicals, oil, biology, pharmaceutical engineering, energy and the environment Emphasizing the important role of Entrepreneurship, Sustainability and Internationalisation in the core curriculum Some Recommendations to Management Education Teaching Content 19

23 Teaching Method Faculty Development School-enterprise collaborations International Collaboration Accreditation-sustainable development FIGURE 10: TEACHING CONTENT FIGURE 11: TEACHING METHOD 20

24 FIGURE 12: TEACHING FACULTY FIGURE 13:INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION FIGURE 14: SCHOOL-ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION 21

25 FIGURE 15: ACCREDITATION ISSUES CONCLUSION We hope we have been able to demonstrate to you an indication of the many major issues facing management education in China, today and in the future, and in our case study about ECUST, the major issues facing us as a University. We would certainly welcome any feedback you may be able to give us. 22

26 REFERENCES Alon, I.McIntyre,J.R. (Eds.) (2006), Business and Management Education in China:Transition, Pedagogy, Training and Alliances, USA, World Scientific Publishing Co. Arnove, R.F., Torres, C.A. (2007), Comparative Education: The Dialectics of the Global and the Local, USA, Rowman and Littlejohn. Brandenburg, U., Zhu, J., (2007), Higher Education in China in the light of massifications and demographic change, Lessons to be learnt for Germany, Germany, Arbeitspapier No.87. Cheng,S., Zhou, C., Chan X., Yong, S. (Eds.)(2012), China s Reality and Global Vision, Singapore, World Scientific Publishing Co. China Education Yearbook (2112 and earlier years) (Education Yearbook of China) published by People s Education Press, China, Development and Planning Division, Education Department, Ministry of Education, China. Chinese Ministry of Education, Many papers over a number of years, on Chinese Higher Education and Business and Management Education. Fewsmith, J.(2010), China Today, China Tomorrow: Domestic Politics, Economy and Society, USA, Roman and Littlejohn. Haizcheng, L., (2003),Economic Transition and Returns to Education in China, Economics and Education Review, 22, Haizcheng, L, (2010), Higher Education in China, Complement or Competitor to U.S. Universities? Book Chapter in Clotfelter, C.T.,American Universities in a Global Market, Cambridge, MA, NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research. Sheehan,B, Wang,G,(2013),(Eds.) Case Studies on Organizational Culture of Chinese Companies and Comparison with Organizational Culture in Western Companies in https//chinesecasestudies.blogspot.com retrieved 25 th August, retrieved 16 August, August, August, Yang, R. (2002),Third Delight The Internationalization of Higher Education in China, USA, Routledge. Zhou, J., Minister of Ministry of Education, China, Higher Education in China,1st Edition, USA, Centage learning, 1 st July. 23

27 A FUZZY SET THEORETIC APPROACHTO EVALUATE WEIGHTS OF CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS FOR PRODUCT DESIGNING Indranil Ghosh, Calcutta Business School, Pranab K. Dan, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, West Bengal University of Technology,India, Goutam Sengupta Calcutta Business School, ABSTRACT This research attempts to establish a model to evaluate the relative weights of different requirement criteria of a consumer product since success of any consumer product predominantly depends on the translation process of customer requirements into engineering characteristics. The initial step of the product design life cycle is the proper identification of customer needs. The Quality function deployment technique has been used to carry out the mapping process between the customer needs and the characteristics of technical descriptors. In this work a Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical technique based algorithm is presented to prioritize the customer requirements appropriately for product design and development. Key words: Quality Function Deployment, Analytical Hierarchy Process, Fuzzy Set, Inherent Ambiguity, Vagueness. 24

28 INTRODUCTION The Quality Function deployment (QFD) is a very well-known and famous approach to incorporate customer requirements while carrying out technical specification analysis of any product development process. Researchers all over the world have identified and discussed the importance of the quality function deployment(qfd) step in the product design and development lifecycle (Akao, 1990; Sireli, Kauffmann and Ozan, 2007). Proper evaluation of customer needs to obtain the relative weighting of the requirements is very critical as it is an integral part of the QFD process. Wrongly determined importance weighting of customer requirements would directly affect the technical specification setting and this glitch can possibly be amplified in subsequent phases of product development and may ultimately result in ineffective product design or to a loss of competitive edge for any product-based business organization (Swan and Combs, 1976). The Quality function deployment process is composed of four steps. The initial step is to link the customer benefits sought and technical specification of the product. Product specification, part specification and manufacturing specification activities are carried out in subsequent phases. Traditional approaches utilize the house of quality method to establish the voice of customers, i.e. what they actually look for in the product and how this need can be achieved by a set of possible engineering designs. However in order to properly mark the customers requirements and to conduct quality function deployment it is essential to deduce the relative important weighting of the requirements as accurately as possible. Conjoint Analysis, Regression Analysis, Factor Analysis, etc. are statistical data analysis techniques (Chen and Ko, 2011) which have been deployed to analyze the feature effects and to evaluate the priority of requirements but these are less in number. A number of works have been written to evaluate the customer demands to interface them with the QFD process for product innovation and development but they are relatively scarce in the literature. This problem is similar to the well-known multiattribute/criteria decision making problem where the first step is to determine importance/weights of each attribute or criteria. Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques (Korhonen, Moskowitz and Wallenius, 1992; Hwang andyoon, 1981) are a well addressed research area where the objective is to rank alternatives against a given criteria set. The first step of solving such a problem is to determine the weight of each criterion. Alternatives are then ranked against set weighted criteria. Literature reports several such works accomplished by applying methods such as Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) (Chakraborty, Ghosh and Dan, 2011), Analytical Network Process (ANP), TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) (Dagdeviren, Yavuj and Kilinic, 2009), (Onut and Soner, (2008)) VIKOR (Chang and Hsu, 2009), ELECTRE(Beccali, Cellura and Ardente, 1998), etc. Research is being actively carried out by hybridizing such methods with some stochastic meta-heuristic search algorithms such as the Genetic Algorithm (GA) (Deb, Agarwal and Meyarvian 2002), Simulated Annealing (SA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Tabu Search (TS), etc. (Jang, Sun and Mizutani, 1996) to fine tune functionality of the MCDM framework and to obtain accurate results.. Criteria ranking works can broadly be sub-divided into two parts- Methods that deal with a crisp data set and Algorithms customized to model the inherent ambiguity associated with decision making. AHP is a simple yet effective MCDM algorithm that has drawn the attention of 25

29 researchers world-wide and resulted in many successful works. The working principle of AHP is to collect experts opinions in the form of a pairwise comparison matrix of different criteria and to compute the eigenvalues from the matrix to determine the relative importance of each criterion. Traditional AHP deploys Saaty s nine point scale (crisp value) prioritizing the criteria. Sometimes judgments may suffer from ambiguity and uncertainty due to vague subjective evaluation by human minds which a crisp scaling system cannot effectively handle. As the objective of our work is to directly incorporate the consumers needs into product design, opinion has to be mined from their own judgments. Owing to vagueness and uncertainty associated with human decision making, there is a high possibility that algorithms defined on a classical set theory principle would yield a solution trapped in local optima. A Fuzzy set, which is a generalized version of a classical Boolean set, is famous for its efficacy in dealing with vagueness as reported in the literature. This study presents a novel fuzzy triangular number based on a new scaling system to capture the customer views and subsequently applies Cheng s extent analysis based on AHP procedure to obtain the final ranking of requirements for further processing of the QFD process. This work betrays the framework and application of Fuzzy set theory based on an AHP algorithm to overcome the difficulties which are found in other traditional techniques to model imprecision associated with decision making. We have demonstrated its principle to rank the customer demands or features of a car. This work tries to figure out the priority of the Indian automobile bias in buying. The following portion of the article is subdivided into three sections- In the second section we discuss the research methodologies, i.e. concepts and principles of a Fuzzy set and AHP technique in detail, the presented framework is illustrated and justified with an example where feature ranking of an automobile is conducted after a survey in the result and discussion (third) section and we finally conclude and discuss future research scope in the last section.. METHODOLOGIES Literature reports that the traditional Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method has been successfully employed in various decision making problems (Zhang,1999; Cheng and Mon, 1994) such as identifying critical success factors for ERP implementation, project selection, allocating budget, setting priorities, etc. in large numbers. AHP solves multi attribute decision making problem in two steps- (1) Assessing the weights of attributes and (2) Ranking the alternatives based on the calculated relative weights. It basically transforms the original problem into sub-problems in a hierarchical manner and solves each sub-problem at each hierarchy. It utilizes Saaty s 9 point scale to measure the relative importance of one attribute over others in a pairwise comparison manner. Table 1 displays the conventional 9 point scale. The Linguistic scale is used to compare attributes in a pairwise manner for subjective evaluation of them and the grade values are used for mathematical processing of data. 26

30 TABLE 1: SAATY S 9 POINT SCALE Linguistic Scale Grade Value Equally important (1) Weakly important ( 3) Essentially important (5) Very strong important (7) Absolutely important (9) 2, 4, 6 and 8 ratings represent intermediate values in between respective linguistic scales. This crisp scaling system is effective when the qualitative assessments from experts are hardly affected by imprecision, i.e. deterministic in nature. This classical set theory based AHP algorithm fails to model uncertainty if aroused due to vagueness of human judgment. On the other hand, Fuzzy Set theory originally proposed by LotfiZadeh back in1965 which has enjoyed tremendous success in the area modeling of complex problems of diverse application areas ranging from engineering to management science is designed to deal with vagueness and imprecision associated with data. It has captured the focus of researchers worldwide. Many managerial decision making problems have been solved by different algorithms incorporating the knowledge from Fuzzy set theory. As the objective of our study is to incorporate the customer views about the features of any product using the Quality Function Deployment method, a survey should be conducted among the potential buyers of the product. The possibility of their judgments being affected by inherent ambiguity is substantially high compared to the views from experts. Hence any algorithm applied on crisp data would possibly result in a local optimal solution. As Quality function deployment would further proceed on the earlier results obtained, the particular product may fail to acquire the market share or make profit as projected initially by any organization. To overcome these issues, in this study we have applied Fuzzy set theory based on an Analytical Hierarchy framework to evaluate the degree of importance of different features of any consumer product from customer judgments and illustrated the performance of the algorithm for feature ranking of automobiles. Chang s extent analysis has been utilized in the Fuzzy AHP model to determine the ranking of features. Saaty s nine point importance scale which is often used in the AHP technique has been converted into Fuzzy triangular numbers based on a modified scaling system to express the subjective evaluation of customers judgments regarding factors of any consumer product to deal with inherent ambiguity. 27

31 Fuzzy Set: A fuzzy set ã in a universe of discourse X is characterized by a membership function µ ã (x) which associates with each element x in X, a real number in the interval [0, 1]. The function value µ ã (x) is termed the grade of membership of x in ã. The present study uses triangular fuzzy numbers. A triangular fuzzy number ã can be defined by a triplet (aa 1, aa 2, aa 3 ), where aa 1 and aa 3 represent the lower and upper bounds of the fuzzy number A, respectively, and a2 is the most promising value of the fuzzy number A. The basic mathematic operations on two fuzzy triangular numbersã and ũ are computed as follows: ã * ũ = (aa 1 uu 1, aa 2 uu 2, aa 3 uu 3 )for multiplication, ã + ũ = (aa 1 + uu 1, aa 2 + uu 2, aa 3 + uu 3 )for addition, ã ũ = (aa 1 uu 1, aa 2 uu 2, aa 3 uu 3 )for subtraction, ã / ũ = (aa 1 /uu 1, aa 2 /uu 2, aa 3 /uu 3 )for division. (ã) -1 = (1/aa 1, 1/aa 2, 1/aa 3 ) for inverse Fuzzy AHP Method: After conducting an exhaustive survey of the literature (Wang and Chen, (2008); Chang, (1992)) it is quite evident that inherent ambiguity and uncertainty do affect the judgment process of carried out by the human mind. With the increasing number of difficulties of traditional (classical set theory based) AHP technique for not being able to capture and model the aroused fuzziness for decision making, Laarhoven and Pedrycz (1983)proposed the traditional AHP into the fuzzy AHP method by incorporating the triangular fuzzy number of the fuzzy set theory into the pairwise comparison matrix of the AHP, to customize the traditional AHP for the purpose of solving vague problems. Many studies have reported the use of fuzzy set theory in AHP method by using simple membership function, trapezoidal fuzzy numbers, triangular fuzzy numbers, interval-based membership grade, etc. Most of these techniques have yielded good solutions and justified their usage. Among them is Chang s extent analysis algorithm. (Chang, 1996) is a very effective and systemic approach dedicated to multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problems. Few researchers have adopted it to solve problems which can be formulated as MCDM problems. Its main essence is to rank alternatives after deciding the priority of attributes. This work employed fuzzy triangular numbers and Chang s (1996) extent analysis method in the AHP technique for requirement analysis and ranking. To apply this algorithm an original linguistic scale has been modified into a new fuzzy scale utilizing the concept of triangular fuzzy numbers which has been discussed in the earlier section. Table 2 displays the triangular Fuzzy number based modified 9 point scaling system for subjective evaluation and mathematical processing. 28