Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory | DEMATEL | Analyzing the Cause and Effect relationships

The acronym of DEMATEL is Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory, which is used for estimation of cause and effect relationships between the process parameters used for the study in any application into research. 

 This DEMATEL developed in Geneva Research Centre of the Battelle Memorial Institute. The purpose is to visualize the structure of complicated causal relationships through matrixes or digraphs. Specifically used in analyzing the cause and effect relationships among the components of the system. It also used for the Interdependence among the factors. It also Map the relative relationships. 

Steps in DEMATEL

Step 1 - Initialize the direct - relationship matrix

The decision maker first assess the correlation between the groups of attributes based on the influence of each criteria with certain scale.

0 - No influence

1 - Low influence

2 - Medium influence

3 - High influence

4 - Very high influence

 

 Step 2 - Normalization of direct-relation matrix

Based on the pair-wise comparison, with the below formulae need to normalized the above formulated matrix.

Step 3 - Estimation of Total-relation matrix

Here, the Identity matrix is used for the estimation by using the below formulae. 

 

Step 4 - Evaluate the sum of rows and columns in the total relation matrix

The total relation sum of the columns and rows has to estimate by using the formulae

 

 Step 5 - Defining the Threshold value

Based on the average elements in the Total matrix

 

Step 6 - Formulation of the casual-relation graphic 

It provides information to identify the most important criteria and their in influence levels in order to recognize the driving variables of the considered problem in a complex system, and design for reasonable measures to take care of the issues based on the attribute type and in influence level

This is an just an example, I have considered for the Green Electric discharge machining process, how to map the interrelationships.

Video (Tutorial) - How to solve DEMATEL step by step - Video

Download the Excel sheet demonstrated in the video

 

 References

Shieh, J. I., Wu, H. H., & Huang, K. K. (2010). A DEMATEL method in identifying key success factors of hospital service quality. Knowledge-Based Systems, 23(3), 277-282.

Sivapirakasam, S. P., Mathew, J., & Surianarayanan, M. (2011). Multi-attribute decision making for green electrical discharge machining. Expert Systems with Applications, 38(7), 8370-8374.