Modeling of a Fuzzy Expert System for Choosing an Appropriate Supply Chain Collaboration Strategy

Nowadays, there has been a great interest for business enterprises to work together or collaborate in the supply chain. It is thus possible for them to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. However, determining the right collaboration strategy is not an easy task. Namely, there are several factors that need to be considered at the same time. In this regard, an expert system based on fuzzy rules is proposed to choose an appropriate collaboration strategy for a given supply chain. To this end, firstly, the factors that are significant for supply chain collaboration are extracted via an extensive review of literature. Then, a simulation model of a supply chain is constructed to reveal the performance of collaborative practices under various scenarios. Thereby, it is made possible to establish fuzzy rules for the expert system. Finally, feasibility and practicability of our proposed model is verified with an illustrative case.