Modelling a decision-making network for sustainable manufacturing strategy

Abstract

This paper develops an approach that explores the impact of stakeholders' interests in developing a sustainable manufacturing strategy. Manufacturing firms are faced with the challenge of integrating sustainability with the classical function of manufacturing. To integrate these two objectives is to take into consideration different stakeholders' interests as significant drivers toward sustainability. This work explores the significance of these interests in developing a manufacturing strategy using the proposed probabilistic fuzzy analytic network process. The method handles the complexity of the decision framework and judgment elicitation in pairwise comparisons is described using linguistic variables with equivalent triangular fuzzy numbers. Probability theory is then used to merge the judgments of multiple decision-makers. The method is useful for handling complexity and uncertainty in group decision-making. Results show the content of the sustainable manufacturing strategy. Insights and future works are also discussed.