A Combined Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Framework for Process-Based Digitalisation Opportunity and Priority Assessment (DOPA)

Abstract

With the introduction of Industry 4.0 and supporting technologies, both service and manufacturing companies faced external and internal pressure for "going digital". In many cases, companies cannot decide on the digitalisation initiative due to preliminary groundwork to justify the required investment. For digitalisation priority setting under uncertain benefits, available digital technology selection methods lack the focus on process needs and do not fully utilise quality management tools in the Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) framework. In this context, this study aims to propose a novel, context-independent, and process-based Digital Opportunity Priority Assessment (DOPA) methodology. The proposed approach utilizes critical to quality measures (CTQs), the causes with potential adversary effects as alternatives, and the importance, frequency, and digital control level of CTQs as the criteria in TOPSIS. AHP and Fuzzy AHP validate CTQ importance criteria. The study also presents a real industry application to validate the proposed model.