Soft-sensing of level of satisfaction in TOC product-mix decision heuristic using robust fuzzy-LP

Product-mix decision through theory of constraints (TOC) should take into account considerations like the decisionmaker’s (DM) level of satisfaction in order to make product-mix decision a robust one. Sensitivity of the decision made, needs to be focused for a bottle-neck-free, optimal product-mix solution of TOC problem. A membership function (MF) has been suitably designed in the present work, first in finding out the degree of imprecision in the productmix decision, and thereafter to sense the level of satisfaction of the DM. Inefficiency of traditional linear programming (LP) in handling multiple-bottleneck problem through TOC has been discussed through an illustrative example. Comparison of traditional LP over fully fuzzified-LP (FLP) model has also been addressed to elucidate the advantages of FLP in TOC. Key objective of this work is to guide DMs in finding out the optimal product-mix with higher degree of satisfaction with lesser degree of fuzziness under tripartite fuzzy environment. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.