Title: A combination mathematical model (FA, AHP, FARAS) for ranking the effective factors on strategic outsourcing in supply chain of small and medium manufacturing enterprises

Authors: Mohsen Shafiei Nikabadi; Leila Zamani

Addresses: Industrial Management Department, Economics and Management Faculty, Semnan University, Semnan, Iran ' Industrial Management Department, Economics and Management Faculty, Semnan University, Semnan, Iran

Abstract: Outsourcing is one of the most popular business strategy in the global era. Outsourcing can bring tremendous benefits to organisations, but if an outsourcing decision is not precise and factors influencing the outsourcing decision are not considered, it can also bring irreparable damage. This study is to identify and rank the factors affecting the outsourcing on the basis of strategic perspective in supply chains of small and medium manufacturing enterprises. In this study, the factors influencing the strategic outsourcing decisions were determined on the basis of prior literature. In this approach, the refinement of the parameters using factor analysis was conducted to determine the most important sub-indices, and then due to the multidimensional nature of these factors, the analytic hierarchy process technique used for the weighting of factors and fuzzy additive ratio assessment method are used for ranking sub-criteria factors influencing strategic outsourcing. The findings show that the 'quality' is the most important factor and 'management agent' is the factor with the lowest importance.

Keywords: additive ratio assessment; fuzzy ARAS; analytical hierarchical process; AHP; factor analysis; fuzzy logic; small and medium-sized enterprises; strategic outsourcing; supply chain management; SCM; manufacturing SMEs; manufacturing industry; manufacturing supply chains; mathematical modelling; multicriteria decision making; MCDM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGSB.2016.078813

International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business, 2016 Vol.8 No.2, pp.131 - 157

Received: 13 Oct 2015
Accepted: 20 May 2016
Published online: 02 Sep 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article