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A comprehensive decision making structure for partitioning of make-to-order, make-to-stock and hybrid products

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Abstract

Manufacturing systems produce their products by making use of three main strategies: make-to-order, make-to-stock and hybrid (combination of MTO and MTS strategies) systems. Hence, several products must be considered and partitioned in terms of many different conflicting criteria, leading to a large set of subjective or ambiguous data. Thus, an effective evaluation approach is essential to improve decision quality. In this paper a comprehensive decision, making structure is proposed to choose the proper strategy for producing the products. It consists of a novel hybrid methodology, which combines analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) for partitioning of products. In this study, the rating of each alternative regarding different criteria (throughout the TOPSIS technique) is described by means of linguistic variables. Furthermore, fuzzy AHP methodology is applied to determine the weights of evaluation criteria. At the end, the effectiveness of the proposed model is demonstrated through a case study.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

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Correspondence to M. Rabbani.

Appendices

Appendix A1

A.1. Questionnaires for management level

2.1 Company-related questionnaire

  1. 1.

    Can you please describe your main products?

  2. 2.

    Who is the owner of the company?

  3. 3.

    What is the approximate number of employees, which involve into producing new product?

  4. 4.

    What is the approximate turn over you expecting to earn?

  5. 5.

    Who are the main competitors?

    • Local _____ National_____ Global_____

  6. 6.

    What is your position compared to your competitors?

  7. 7.

    Where are customers of your new product located?

  8. 8.

    Which one best describes production strategy of your company? (if more than one please specify the percentage of each)

    • No customization ()_____

    • Pure customization ()_____

  9. 9.

    How does the company maintain its relationship with customers?

  10. 10.

    How is the ability of human resources for producing the new product?

  11. 11.

    What is your opinion about the customer commitment of the new product?

  12. 12.

    What is your opinion about the supplier commitment of the Raw material of the new product?

  13. 13.

    How long does it take to respond to a customer enquiry?

  14. 14.

    To what extent does your company make use of computer databases in the design process?

  15. 15.

    How does your company show recognition to the employees for improved performance?

  16. 16.

    In what ways does the company motivate workers?

  17. 17.

    Have there been any quality improvement initiatives in this company?

  18. 18.

    Who actually as responsible for the improvement? (i.e., managers/employees).

  19. 19.

    Does the company gather any data about the customer-needs? What about other data?

  20. 20.

    What mechanisms do you have for communication between management and shop floor workers?

  21. 21.

    Does the company have a manual system such as a planning board/work to list or any package to ease the information flow?

  22. 22.

    To what extent does your company make use of a computer to cut the internal transactions?

  23. 23.

    What kind of advertisement is used?

  24. 24.

    Do you think it is appropriate to the target customers?

  25. 25.

    Have the company received any form of certification?

  26. 26.

    What are the mission, vision and value of the company?

2.2 Product-related questionnaire

  1. 1.

    What is your approximation about holding and back order costs of new product?

  2. 2.

    How long the new product can be kept in the warehouse approximately?

  3. 3.

    What is the approximate delivery lead time you are expecting for the new product?

  4. 4.

    Who is responsible for the following tasks for new product? The company or the customer?

    Design

    Company ( )

    Customer ( )

    Specification

    Company ( )

    Customer ( )

    Purchasing

    Company ( )

    Customer ( )

2.3 Process-related questionnaire

  1. 1.

    Which machines are often used? NC or CNC machines? Why?

  2. 2.

    How flexible are the machines, can they be moved around if necessary?

  3. 3.

    Could you please tell me about the company storage system for work in progress, raw material and final products?

  4. 4.

    Can you describe the process of designing the new products?

  5. 5.

    Who else is involved in the design?

  6. 6.

    Who does the design for the new product?

  7. 7.

    Can you describe the overall processes of responding to a customer enquiry?

  8. 8.

    Do you often experience delays in the arrival of raw materials or components or subassemblies on the shop floor?

A.2. Questionnaires for staff level

3.1 Company-related questionnaire

  1. 1.

    What kind of work do you do?

  2. 2.

    What are your main duties?

  3. 3.

    Have you ever trained how to do your job effectively?

  4. 4.

    How is your flexibility in doing other operations?

  5. 5.

    How many machines you are able to handle?

  6. 6.

    Do you know how to repair the machines? How many and how much?

  7. 7.

    To what extent does your company make use of computerized databases?

  8. 8.

    Are you aware of any kind of promotional activities by this company?

  9. 9.

    Where can you find information about quality in this company?

  10. 10.

    Where can you find information about cost, orders, and delivery in the company? Is it easy to access?

  11. 11.

    Have you been informed about the company’s goal?

  12. 12.

    Can you easily access any information or records? Or does the company consider it as confidential?

  13. 13.

    Are you encouraged to make suggestions to the management? If so, how?

3.2 Product-related questionnaire

  1. 1.

    What is your approximation about holding and back order costs of new product?

  2. 2.

    How long the new product can be kept in the warehouse approximately?

  3. 3.

    What is the approximate delivery lead time you are expecting for the new product?

3.3 Process-related questionnaire

  1. 1.

    Could you please tell me about the company storage system for work in progress, raw material and final products?

  2. 2.

    Which machines are often used? NC or CNC machines? Why?

  3. 3.

    How flexible are the machines, can they be moved around if necessary?

  4. 4.

    How do you set up/changeover the machines?

  5. 5.

    How do you sequence your jobs?

  6. 6.

    Do you often experience delays in the arrival of raw materials or components or subassemblies on the shop floor?

Appendix A2

4.1 Questionnaire

Read the following questions and put check marks on the pair-wise comparison matrices. If an attribute on the left is more important than the one matching on the right, put your check mark to the left of the importance ‘‘Equal’’ under the importance level you prefer. If an attribute on the left is less important than the one matching on the right, put your check mark to the right of the importance “Equal” under the importance level you prefer.

4.2 Questions

Q1.:

How important is C 1 when it is compared with C 2 in terms of utilizing MTO strategy?

Q2.:

How important is C 1 when it is compared with C 3 in terms of utilizing MTO strategy?

Q3.:

How important is C 1 when it is compared with C 4 in terms of utilizing MTO strategy?

Q4.:

How important is C 2 when it is compared with C 3 in terms of utilizing MTO strategy?

Q5.:

How important is C 2 when it is compared with C 4 in terms of utilizing MTO strategy?

Q6.:

How important is C 3 when it is compared with C 4 in terms of utilizing MTO strategy?

 

With respect to: utilizing MTO system

Importance (preference) of one criteria over another

Questions

Criteria

Just equal

Equally important

Weakly more important

Strongly more important

Very strongly more important

Absolutely more important

Criteria

Q1

W1

      

C2

Q2

W1

      

C3

Q3

W1

      

C4

Q4

W2

      

C3

Q5

W2

      

C4

Q6

W3

      

C4

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Zaerpour, N., Rabbani, M., Gharehgozli, A.H. et al. A comprehensive decision making structure for partitioning of make-to-order, make-to-stock and hybrid products. Soft Comput 13, 1035–1054 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-008-0377-x

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