Decision-Making Techniques of the Consumer Behaviour Optimisation of the Product Own Price

Abstract

Giving an offer to a consumer and knowing the average cost of the product (ACP) for the product along the entire production process, depending on the size of the order, can be a very important indicator which also has an impact on the lean production process. This paper presents a mathematical model to analyze the impact of customer changes (changes in the product type, quantity and/or quality) on the lean production process, and thus on the average production price (ACP). Any change in the process could mean a deviation from the lean process, which means an increase of the ACP for the company, which is the main goal of Industry 4.0. The measurements can be performed on all of the operations of the production process in a company, or only the most critical operations in terms of waste can be selected. The model was tested on an example of a product from a Slovenian company. The average cost of the product in the selected work operation turned out to be 71% higher than the optimal case due to an excessive stock of semi-finished products. Excessive stock can lead to a situation in which the product’s own price even exceeds the selling price of the product, which of course leads to the loss of the company.

Keywords

• decision-making techniques
• Industry 4.0
• manufacturing symmetry
• consumer purchasing behaviour
• average cost of product
• optimisation