TOWARDS FUZZY LOGIC IN PARTNER EVALUATION AND SELECTION FOR VIRTUAL ENTERPRISES

Abstract

The trend where enterprises outsource competencies is getting replaced by strategic alliances, where enterprises work together towards a common goal and share responsibilities as well as their profits. This calls for new ways of organizing work and the technological support that allows flexibility. A Virtual Enterprise (VE) is a temporary organization that pools together different member enterprise core competencies. The construction industry is a key sector in any economy. A construction project is implemented by a team of professionals and an alliance of companies. A crucial competitive factor of a VE, is its ability to form an end-user focused team which can be jeopardized if the right team is not formed. This can be attributed to poor choice of partners for the tasks due to insufficient information available about partners and lack of facilitation techniques. This study proposed definition of multiple criteria decision making problem for construction projects. A multi criteria decision making technique is designed that can be applied to derive each partner's weight and determine the best partner that is eventually selected for each task. A technique that incorporates fuzzy logic in Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP - a multi criteria decision making technique) to be used by construction industry project initiators to effectively evaluate and select right partners for tasks even when information available about the partners is insufficient is designed and applied. Incorporating fuzzy logic in decision making techniques can address the partners’ evaluation and selection process reliability issue.