Strategic Alignment of Management Information System Functions for Manufacturing and Service Industries with an F-MCGDM Model

Abstract

Considering constantly increasing global competition in the market and developing technologies, information systems (ISs) have become an important component of the business world and a vital component of intelligent systems. An IS provides support for planning, controlling, analyzing activities, and support in decisions by managing data throughout the organization to assist executives in their decisions. The main function of an IS is to collect data spread between various parts of the organization and business partners and to process these collected data to form reliable information, which is required for decision making. Another critical function of an IS is to transfer the necessary information to the point-of-need in a timely manner. ISs assist in the conversion of data and information into meaningful outcomes. An IS is a combination of software, data storage hardware, related infrastructure, and people in the organization that use the system. Many business organizations rely on management information systems (MISs), and they conduct their critical operations based on these systems. The existence of an efficient MIS is a requirement for the sustainability of any business. However, MIS’s efficiency depends on the business’s requirements and nature. The compatibility of MIS with business in the company is vital for the successful implementation of these systems. The current study analyzes differences in expectations of manufacturing and service industries from MISs. For this aim, a fuzzy multi-criteria group decision-making (F-MCGDM) model is proposed to determine the differentiating success factors of MIS in both manufacturing and service industries. Findings indicate that there are considerable differences in the needs of both industries from MIS.