Case study: Supply chain view of plant location decision making with the use of AHP methodology

As a node of a supply chain, plant plays a key role in the network, which has been a strategic topic in the study of supply chain management model. Plant location decision is one of the crucial problems in the optimization and design of supply chain. The converte of competitions between single companies to competitions between different supply chains urges the extension of plant location decision from the view of single plant to the entire supply chain. This paper presents the application of AHP methodology in decision making of plant location considering the roles of plant in an entire supply chain. The different levels of criteria such as cost, cycle time of supply chain, and quality of plant locations, are proposed to be considered in the decision model. The case presented in this paper concerns plant location decision of a British group, who selected an optimal plant location from six alternative industrial parks in China.