A Hybrid Approach to Develop a Structural Model of Factors Affecting Supply Chain Collaboration in Home Appliance Industry

Supply chain collaboration as a collective approach to compete against rivals, aims to improve performance of supply chain. In order to develop collaboration across supply chain it is vital to identify factors affecting collaboration and their interactions. to do so, we have proposed a hybrid methodology to develop a model of factors affecting supply chain collaboration. In first step, Systematic Literature Review was used to identify factors affecting supply chain collaboration. Then, Discrete Consensus Support Model was employed to make close consensus among experts and to select the most preferred factors. In next step interpretive structural modeling and fuzzy cognitive maps were used to develop hierarchical structure of interactions among factors and also to determine the strength of causality relations. Simultaneous use of these two methods compensates the weakness of both methods by developing a quantified structural model of factors affecting supply chain collaboration. The developed model provides useful information about relationships among factors and also the strength of these relations which facilitate the decision-making process for managers of home appliance companies to develop collaboration.