A Fuzzy Expert System to Select a Supply Chain Strategy: Lean, Agile or Leagile

Supply chain field has always been an aspiration for competitiveness in manufacturing organizations. Any organization’s conditions can be judged based on several criteria, such as robustness, rapid reconfiguration, lead time compression, etc. These criteria effectively determine the kind of supply chain strategy; it should be noted that this strategy varies in different markets and industries. Therefore, considering an appropriate strategy for the supply chain is an essential issue for most managers. Hence, this study, using a fuzzy expert system, shows how to select the best supply chain strategy. Three popular strategies, i.e., lean, agile, and leagile, are the main elements in this research. In addition, five applicable criteria are applied for selecting a supply chain strategy. A fuzzy expert system based on if-then rules was designed to connect these criteria to three strategies and select an appropriate supply chain strategy. Hence, criteria and supply chain strategies are taken to be input and output of this expert system, respectively, which lead to faster decision-making in the selection of supply chain strategy.