Feasibility of Analytical Hierarchy Process as a Tool for Reshoring Decisions

• Reshoring decision making is least explored as these decisions are complex and timeconsuming. Numerous quantitative and qualitative criteria need to be considered in the decision-making. The existing decision-making tools are few and theoretical and lack automatic decision support capabilities. Therefore, there is a need of automatic and rapid decision support tool for reshoring decision making. One of the more well-known systematic decision-making tools is analytical hierarchy process (AHP) that has been used to handle complex decision problems in operations management domain. This study aims to investigate the feasibility of AHP as a tool for reshoring decision-making. In order to achieve this, the AHP was applied to six reshoring criteria on an overall level, which also correspond to competitive priorities. First, a hierarchy of criteria was constructed, then the pairwise comparison of each criteria pair was made, then the final priority weights of the criteria were calculated, and finally the consistency of the comparisons was checked. The criteria Quality and Cost obtained higher priority weights in reshoring decision. Later, the final priority weights of the criteria were used to evaluate fifteen different reshoring decision scenarios and compared against reshoring expert’s opinion. It was found that thirteen of these decision evaluations were correct on comparing the AHP outputs and the expert’s opinion. Only two of the evaluations were not in agreement, however the confidence values on these decisions were very small. Therefore, this research shows that AHP is a feasible tool for reshoring decision making on an overall level of criteria. The tool can be adapted to different decision makers and different reshoring types. The tool provides automatic support for reshoring decisions.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik -- Produktionsteknik, arbetsvetenskap och ergonomi (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering -- Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Reshoring decision making

AHP

Decision support tool

Manufacturing location.

Production Engineering

Human Work Science and Ergonomics

Produktionsteknik

arbetsvetenskap och ergonomi

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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