Make-to-Order or Make-to-Stock: A Hybrid Fuzzy AHP-SWOT Approach

Firms produce some of their products utilizing Make-To-Order (MTO) and another some utilizing Make-to- Stock (MTS) system. Making decision about which of these systems should be chosen is a strategic process. In this article, we have applied one of the strategic decision making approaches in firm's manufacturing system adoption. The present study examines a novel hybrid method for improving the usability of SWOT Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) and AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process). However, due to the complexity and uncertainty involved in real world decision problems, it is sometimes unrealistic or even impossible to require exact judgments. A good decision-making model needs to tolerate vagueness or ambiguity since fuzziness and vagueness are common characteristics in many decision-making problems. The traditional HP requires exact judgments, therefore a commonly used decision analysis method, the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP), and its eigenvalue calculation framework are integrated with SWOT analysis. FAHP’s relation to SWOT yields a novel hybrid method. The aim in applying the new hybrid method is to improve the quantitative information basis of strategic decision-making processes.

Keywords:

Make-to-Order , Make-to-Stock , SWOT , AHP , Fuzzy Theory