Vol.:(0123456789) Operational Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-019-00486-0 1 3 ORIGINAL PAPER A novel approach to solve the problems with network structure Abbas Bonyani 1  · Moslem Alimohammadlou 2 Received: 29 November 2017 / Revised: 8 April 2019 / Accepted: 15 April 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract In Analytic Network Process method (ANP), the complex relationships among dif- ferent levels of decision, transactions, and feedbacks of criteria and alternatives are considered for calculating the weight of elements. However, a large number of pair- wise comparisons in ANP, and the difculties in understanding the methods used for comparison by the expert have reduced the efciency and practicality of this method. The present study aimed to eliminate such problems by providing a new approach using the best–worst method. The proposed approach requires less com- parison data, which results in creating more consistent comparisons, and obtaining more reliable results. In addition, this method can be easily used by the experts. Finally, a numerical example was provided to describe the proposed method and evaluate its capability. Keywords Decision-making · Analytic Network Process · Best–worst method 1 Introduction Saaty (1996) developed a new approach called “Analytic Network Process (ANP)”in order to fnd a solution for the limitations in Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and lack of ability in applying dependencies between criteria and factors. ANP is con- sidered as the extension of Analytic hierarchy process or its general form. In addi- tion, AHP models the decision structure through establishing indirect hierarchical relationships among the criteria while ANP provides the possibility for evaluating more complex internal relationships among the criteria. ANP was developed to cre- ate more realistic conditions for decision-making irrespective of the assumptions * Moslem Alimohammadlou mslmaml@shirazu.ac.ir 1 Department of Industrial Management, Faculty of Management and Accounting, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran 2 Department of Management, Faculty of Economic, Management and Social Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran