Our next step was to analyse the remaining six proposals in detail.
The procedure we used involves consideration of a significant number of

factors. The broad categorization of the factors used may be summarized
as:

Tangible Factors

Hardware configuration
Application and system software
Costs for hardware and software

Intangible Factors

Vendor (business stability, confidence, etc.)

Each of the above broad factors were broken down to several eval-
uation factors. For example, under hardware we considered:

Suitability

Expansion

Maintenance

Word Processing Expansion
Engineering Applications Capability

Because each evaluation factor does not have the same impact on the
overall decision, we assigned a weight factor from a scale of 1 (minor
importance) to 5 (major importance).

Next, for each vendor for each evaluation factor, we assigned a
basic point value from a scale of 0 (non-existent) to 10 (ideal).

Finally, an accumulation of the weighted point values was made for
each vendor. This resulted in the following ranking (from highest to
lowest) :

MAI Canada, Ltd.

Tri-Data Services Inc.

ISS Ltd. (including IBM hardware)
Syrja & Marler Associates Ltd.

Systematics Consultants Ltd. (including !BM hardware)
TRW Canada Limited .

Of all the factors considered in our analysis, the cost factor is the
most visible. We have thus included in Exhibit IIl-1 a summary of costs
from the proposals, including supplementary costs gained from discussions
with the vendors. These costs are for the data processing software and
hardware only. Costs for word processing are shown in Exhibit !1-2.

Thorne Stevenson & Kellogg