Eliciting a mode of transportation to improve product life cycle performance

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe how to implement the utility theory to a supply chain problem. In this problem, two different modes of freight transportation are compared to improve life cycle performance of a mass product: trucks and trains. First, the problem is described, the criteria and attributes are introduced and the dataset for this problem is defined. Then, a description of the utility theory model is conducted, explaining the choice of the multiplicative model instead of the additive one. After that, the utility functions for each attribute are elicited, and a trade-off analysis is conducted in order to define indifference points and to calculate the scaling factors. Then, the aggregation function is formulated for this problem, the alternatives ranked, and the best mode of transportation elicited.