An Extensive Group Decision Methodology for Alliance Partner Selection Problem in Collaborative Networked Organisations

Abstract

More and more companies address collaborations and cooperation as strategic topics to build competitive networks and broaden the global competences provided by the community thus created. These companies can cooperate with partners to share resources, competences, risks, or costs. Besides, penetrating new markets can be easier when associating new partners. The selection process of an adequate partner considered for a specific objective is a key success factor. This paper proposes an evaluation methodology for selecting an alliance partner in the case of a network of enterprises, manufacturing high precision mechanical components. An extensive group decision methodology is developed using both quantitative data and qualitative judgments in the evaluation of criteria. Since some performances cannot be represented with crisp numbers, the proposed methodology allows experts to use linguistic variables to express their judgments for the assessment of qualitative criteria. Two main phases are integrated in this methodology. In the first phase, criteria and experts weightings are calculated to determine the criteria importance using fuzzy the analytical hierarchy process. In the second phase, a technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution is proposed to rank the different alternatives, corresponding to the alternative partnerships.