Document Type : Research Note
Author
Dept. of Industrial Management\r\nUniversity of Allameh Tabatabai
Abstract
In any organization, there are many stakeholders, whose points of view should be taken into account when planning. The involvement of different stakeholders in the decision making process is an important feature to be considered, not only for interpretation and making decisions based on their judgment, but also for their participation in research and the decision making process. A decision is evaluated as a suitable decision when all stakeholders are satisfied with the final decision, which means that the stakeholders should reach a consensus
on the decision. Stakeholder participation in the decision making process enhances respect for their opinions, as well as improving the learning process in the organization and better understanding of the studied system. Involvement of different stakeholders can improve the perception of a problem because of their diverse information, which may be ignored in the presence of just one stakeholder. Therefore, in any planning, it is necessary to consider all stakeholder objectives to reach a compromise. Stakeholder objectives may be in
conflict with each other, and a production plan based on just one stakeholder, however important he/she may be, may create problems in the organization. To overcome these problems, this paper intends to provide a set of linear programming models for each individual stakeholder, with their objectives, in order to discover whether or not stakeholder viewpoints are identical. If the solutions of the models are the same, then, we can claim there are no major conflicts between the stakeholders. Otherwise, it is necessary to aggregate the individual models to obtain a unique model and, therefore, a single solution.
To do this, a multi-objective programming model is established, which is an aggregation of individual linear programming models, in order to consider different stakeholder objectives. Solution of the aggregated model, using the LP metric method, can provide the final solution for an organization that satisfies stakeholder viewpoints as much as possible. The aim of the paper is to provide a methodology to consider different stakeholder viewpoints, with their objectives, in discontinuous production planning systems. Aggregation of individual stakeholder models to obtain a unique solution has been studied via multi-objective programming. The methodology has been applied to an electrical manufacturing company to show the abilities of the methodology. The results of the study show that company stakeholders are relatively satisfied with the solutions. However, there is some small dissatisfaction, which may always exist
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