An integrated MCGP-U and fuzzy-AHP method for enhancing the competitiveness of Taiwan’s forklift industry

Abstract

The operation of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is smaller in scope and scale of business that they tend to suffer from financial crises or even bankruptcy when facing an economic downturn [1]. Thus, most research for SMEs today focuses on the formulation and practice of strategies, such as exploring the key success factors and innovation research. Taiwan’s forklift industry (TFI) belongs to SMEs that it is indispensable from construction engineering, but the related research has always been lacking to improve their competitiveness and sustainability. We refer to the relevant literature and expert opinions and use the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) to verify and rank the 18 factors that affect financial factors in TFI. We summarized these factors into four financial facets, including profits, workforce, holding cost, and stock-out cost. Then, the MCGP-U model is used to find the optimal solution for TFI and Komatsu Forklift Taiwan (KFT). In addition, KFT is taken as an example to ensure decision-makers (DMs) remain KFT in a better financial status and competitive advantages under uncertain business environment. As a result, the MCGP-U model optimizes the four financial facets better than by the rule of thumb in KFT, especially in the holding cost section achieving savings as high as 55.9%. Finally, the model runs fast and provides robust results, which is suitable for SMEs, given the characteristics of lacking experts and funds.