Decision support system for outsourcing strategies

A decision support system (DSS) was conceptually developed to support the decision maker (DM) in classify the activities into core and non-core competencies, and to establish their outsourcing relationship. This DSS is recommended because companies have seen the outsourcing as an alternative for business survival in a competitive market. Thus, for each manufacturing process, the DM needs to be able to decide make or buy (MvB). For this, one approach used is the core competences analysis. However, this evaluation is not trivial because it usually involves several factors. Moreover, pre-fixed scales are common, and it increases the cognitive effort of DM. Therefore, the proposed DSS was able to simplify the outsourcing problem, reducing the cognitive effort required, and giving to the DM a better recommendation according to his/her preferences. A manager can use this DSS to improve his/her understand about the company’ core competencies and, then, to make a final decision.