Determination of the effective criteria on development of Iran furniture industry by analytical hierarchy process

Furniture production industry is fast growing throughout the world. Each country which can join to this international huge market, can make great evolution in its wood industry sector. The aim of this study is determination of the effective criteria on development of Iran furniture industry using Group Decision Making method. For this purpose, after preliminary investigation and interview with some of the furniture producers and relevant experts, effective criteria were divided into six major groups as well as 29 sub-criteria. After getting experts'' opinions via questionnaire, the priority rates of obtained criteria and sub-criteria were determined by Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The results show that economical and regulations criteria have the highest weighting values at the first level. In addition, among 29 effective sub-criteria, improvement of economical stability, reformation of furniture import tariff, development of industrial clusters, creation a competitive opportunity, development of lateral industries and reformation of materials and machines import tarrif have highest priorities as 0.160, 0.092, 0.087, 0.067, 0.055, 0.055 weighting values, respectively.