IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/annopr/v143y2006i1p171-18910.1007-s10479-006-7380-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A model for standardizing human decisions concerning service-contracts management

Author

Listed:
  • R. Sundarraj

Abstract

Increased expectations of today’s customers are causing businesses to offer a variety of warranty contracts for their products. Because of the intense customer contact that takes place during the process of supporting a contract, the planning for contracts has to not only contend with the unpredictable and low demands of the service parts, but must also rely on human decision-making concerning a number of subjective factors. These subjective factors, which are related to the customer, the contract and the contracted product, have seldom been considered in the literature on inventory planning. Moreover, the evaluation of subjective factors often becomes non-standardized and non-coordinated among the geographically dispersed decision-makers of an organization, as was the situation with a Fortune 100 company’s case that motivated this paper. We propose a combination of a heuristic procedure along with the Analytical Hierarchy Process technique that has not been applied in the inventory-planning setting. We also demonstrate how a Web-based information system can be used to standardize the decision process, and discuss the implications of the system on the motivational case. Computational results are also provided to show the effectiveness of the heuristics. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2006

Suggested Citation

  • R. Sundarraj, 2006. "A model for standardizing human decisions concerning service-contracts management," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 143(1), pages 171-189, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:annopr:v:143:y:2006:i:1:p:171-189:10.1007/s10479-006-7380-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s10479-006-7380-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10479-006-7380-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10479-006-7380-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Diaz, Angel & Fu, Michael C., 1997. "Models for multi-echelon repairable item inventory systems with limited repair capacity," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 97(3), pages 480-492, March.
    2. Thomas L. Saaty, 1990. "An Exposition of the AHP in Reply to the Paper "Remarks on the Analytic Hierarchy Process"," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(3), pages 259-268, March.
    3. Wang, Hongzhou, 2002. "A survey of maintenance policies of deteriorating systems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(3), pages 469-489, June.
    4. Teunter, Ruud H. & Fortuin, Leonard, 1998. "End-of-life service: A case study," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 19-34, May.
    5. James S. Dyer, 1990. "Remarks on the Analytic Hierarchy Process," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(3), pages 249-258, March.
    6. Shtub, Avraham & Simon, Moti, 1994. "Determination of reorder points for spare parts in a two-echelon inventory system: The case of non identical maintenance facilities," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 458-464, March.
    7. Easley, Robert F. & Valacich, Joseph S. & Venkataramanan, M. A., 2000. "Capturing group preferences in a multicriteria decision," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 73-83, August.
    8. Huiskonen, Janne, 2001. "Maintenance spare parts logistics: Special characteristics and strategic choices," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1-3), pages 125-133, May.
    9. Dekker, R. & Kleijn, M. J. & de Rooij, P. J., 1998. "A spare parts stocking policy based on equipment criticality," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 69-77, September.
    10. Dutta, Soumitra & Kwan, Stephen & Segev, Arie, 1998. "Business transformation in electronic commerce:: A study of sectoral and regional trends," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 540-551, October.
    11. Rustenburg, W. D. & van Houtum, G. J. & Zijm, W. H. M., 2001. "Spare parts management at complex technology-based organizations: An agenda for research," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1-3), pages 177-193, May.
    12. Ennew, Christine T. & Binks, Martin R., 1999. "Impact of Participative Service Relationships on Quality, Satisfaction and Retention: An Exploratory Study," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 121-132, October.
    13. Knox, Simon, 1998. "Loyalty-based segmentation and the customer development process," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 729-737, December.
    14. Ernest H. Forman & Saul I. Gass, 2001. "The Analytic Hierarchy Process---An Exposition," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 49(4), pages 469-486, August.
    15. Pintelon, L. M. & Gelders, L. F., 1992. "Maintenance management decision making," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 301-317, May.
    16. Kennedy, W. J. & Wayne Patterson, J. & Fredendall, Lawrence D., 2002. "An overview of recent literature on spare parts inventories," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 201-215, March.
    17. Papadopoulos, H. T., 1996. "A field service support system using a queueing network model and the priority MVA algorithm," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 195-203, April.
    18. James S. Dyer, 1990. "A Clarification of "Remarks on the Analytic Hierarchy Process"," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(3), pages 274-275, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. William Liang & Barış Balcıog̃lu & Robert Svaluto, 2013. "Scheduling policies for a repair shop problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 211(1), pages 273-288, December.
    2. Wei Hu & Yongjian Li, 2012. "Retail service for mixed retail and E-tail channels," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 192(1), pages 151-171, January.
    3. Wen-Hsien Tsai & Pei-Ling Lee & Yu-Shan Shen & Elliott Hwang, 2014. "A combined evaluation model for encouraging entrepreneurship policies," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 221(1), pages 449-468, October.
    4. Tsuen-Ho Hsu & Li-Chu Hung & Jia-Wei Tang, 2012. "An analytical model for building brand equity in hospitality firms," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 195(1), pages 355-378, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hu, Qiwei & Boylan, John E. & Chen, Huijing & Labib, Ashraf, 2018. "OR in spare parts management: A review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 266(2), pages 395-414.
    2. Höfer, Tim & Sunak, Yasin & Siddique, Hafiz & Madlener, Reinhard, 2016. "Wind farm siting using a spatial Analytic Hierarchy Process approach: A case study of the Städteregion Aachen," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 222-243.
    3. Gomez-Limon, J.A. & Atance, I., 2004. "Identification of public objectives related to agricultural sector support," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 26(8-9), pages 1045-1071, December.
    4. A Ishizaka & D Balkenborg & T Kaplan, 2011. "Influence of aggregation and measurement scale on ranking a compromise alternative in AHP," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 62(4), pages 700-710, April.
    5. Michele Bernasconi & Christine Choirat & Raffaello Seri, 2010. "The Analytic Hierarchy Process and the Theory of Measurement," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(4), pages 699-711, April.
    6. Bentes, Alexandre Veronese & Carneiro, Jorge & da Silva, Jorge Ferreira & Kimura, Herbert, 2012. "Multidimensional assessment of organizational performance: Integrating BSC and AHP," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 65(12), pages 1790-1799.
    7. Benedetto Barabino & Nicola Aldo Cabras & Claudio Conversano & Alessandro Olivo, 2020. "An Integrated Approach to Select Key Quality Indicators in Transit Services," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 149(3), pages 1045-1080, June.
    8. Saul I. Gass, 2005. "Model World: The Great Debate—MAUT Versus AHP," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 35(4), pages 308-312, August.
    9. M Tavana, 2006. "A priority assessment multi-criteria decision model for human spaceflight mission planning at NASA," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 57(10), pages 1197-1215, October.
    10. Joaquín Pérez, José L. Jimeno, Ethel Mokotoff, 2001. "Another potential strong shortcoming of AHP," Doctorado en Economía- documentos de trabajo 8/02, Programa de doctorado en Economía. Universidad de Alcalá., revised 01 Jun 2002.
    11. Alessio Ishizaka & Sajid Siraj, 2020. "Interactive consistency correction in the analytic hierarchy process to preserve ranks," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 43(2), pages 443-464, December.
    12. Bana e Costa, Carlos A. & Vansnick, Jean-Claude, 2008. "A critical analysis of the eigenvalue method used to derive priorities in AHP," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 187(3), pages 1422-1428, June.
    13. Madjid Tavana & Mariya Sodenkamp & Leena Suhl, 2010. "A soft multi-criteria decision analysis model with application to the European Union enlargement," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 393-421, December.
    14. Devesh Kumar & Gunjan Soni & Rohit Joshi & Vipul Jain & Amrik Sohal, 2022. "Modelling supply chain viability during COVID-19 disruption: A case of an Indian automobile manufacturing supply chain," Operations Management Research, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 1224-1240, December.
    15. Wang, Wenbin & Syntetos, Aris A., 2011. "Spare parts demand: Linking forecasting to equipment maintenance," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 1194-1209.
    16. Martin, D.M. & Mazzotta, M., 2018. "Non-monetary valuation using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis: Sensitivity of additive aggregation methods to scaling and compensation assumptions," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 29(PA), pages 13-22.
    17. James G. Dolan & Donald R. Bordley, 1994. "Isoniazid Prophylaxis," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 14(1), pages 1-8, February.
    18. Zahir, Sajjad, 1999. "Geometry of decision making and the vector space formulation of the analytic hierarchy process," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 373-396, January.
    19. Kennedy, W. J. & Wayne Patterson, J. & Fredendall, Lawrence D., 2002. "An overview of recent literature on spare parts inventories," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 201-215, March.
    20. Faramondi, Luca & Oliva, Gabriele & Setola, Roberto & Bozóki, Sándor, 2023. "Robustness to rank reversal in pairwise comparison matrices based on uncertainty bounds," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(2), pages 676-688.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:annopr:v:143:y:2006:i:1:p:171-189:10.1007/s10479-006-7380-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.