Structural Decisions of Sustainable Manufacturing Strategy with Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (FANP)

Abstract

This paper proposes the use of fuzzy analytic network process FANP in identifying the content of the structural decisions of manufacturing strategy that integrates sustainability and the classical manufacturing strategy framework, considering firm size as a relevant component in decision-making. Fuzzy set theory elucidates judgment through linguistic variables while analytic network process ANP handles the complexity of the decision-making brought about by subjectivity and relationships among components in the decision problem. A group of experts in manufacturing was tasked to elicit judgment in pairwise comparisons following in the methodology of the ANP. Results also show that structural decisions that support sustainability integrate backward supply chain. This supports existing approaches particularly on sustainable supply chain and green purchasing. The contribution of this work lies in adopting a multi-criteria decision-making MCDM framework that identifies the content of the structural decisions of a sustainable manufacturing strategy.