The feasibility of analytic hierarchy model in lean production

Lean Production, rather frequently known by organisations that produce goods and services, especially used by automotive industry widely in today?s business world. Origin of this concept is Japan (this concept was born in Japan) and the main aim of lean production is to reduce costs, improve quality and performance of delivery at the same time by avoiding from all waste in the production area, speeding up the production and flexibility. Therefore, relations with the outer suppliers are very important as much as inner suppliers. To provide the above competences which are the target of production; choice of the suppliers, which have proficiency to work with coordination by the firm, is vitally important. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a decision support technique, guiding to decision makers which is used for multiple criteria decision making problems to make choice among the alternatives by assessing all criteria. In this study, AHP technique was carried out to supplier selection process of a motor company (a firm from automotive industry) that is implementing lean production. Results of the study denote that, AHP technique can be used as a decision support system to get numerical solutions for the supplier selection process which is a multiple criteria decision making problem.