Assessment of the requirements of smart production Systems in SMEs: Intuitionistic Fuzzy Best-Worst Method and Total Interpretive Structural Modeling Integrated Method

Today, manufacturing companies must address the increasing trend of smart manufacturing (SM) to maintain their competitiveness. Concurrently, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which constitute the backbone of numerous production economies, are endeavoring to comprehend the complexities associated with implementing this advanced production system. However, many of these enterprises are hesitant to adopt SM due to insufficient human and financial resources. The transformation of a company's existing system into smart production systems, as opposed to implementing smart manufacturing from the outset, necessitates greater financial and temporal investment. Consequently, it is imperative to consider and integrate effective requirements for smart production systems during the design phase. This study aims to identify these requirements, ascertain their significance, and comprehend the contextual relationships among them. To achieve this, a systematic review method is employed to identify the requirements, followed by the Intuitionistic Fuzzy Multiplicative Best-Worst Method (IFMBWM) to determine their weights. Finally, the TISM method is utilized to understand the interrelationships and compare the levels obtained with the results of the best-worst method. The results indicated that the effective requirements can be categorized into eight main criteria. The highest and most fundamental criterion is the requirement for digitalization and real-time data connection. The second criterion is automation, followed by smart communication with beneficiaries as the third. Overall, small and medium-sized enterprises should prioritize information technology and artificial intelligence requirements to advance towards smart production systems.