OUTSOURCING LABORATORY SERVICES FROM A COLOMBIAN AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH COMPANY USING THE FITRADEOFF METHOD UNDER MULTIPLE STAKEHOLDERS ANALYSIS

ABSTRACT Since most of the studies about outsourcing are focused on mathematical models, this paper seeks to support from theoretical bases the use of partial information to ease the decision-making process; the practical contribution is to apply the FITradeoff method for solving a multicriteria problem of an agricultural research company that seeks to decide about the need to outsource the operation in case to overhead the limited capacity of the analysis services. After the FITradeoff method was applied to elicit preferences from each decision-maker (DM), the results show whether or not it would be feasible to outsource a given service, and what the most promising options are. The method required the DMs to answer in less time only a few questions, which avoided placing an unnecessary cognitive burden on them and proved to be useful in assisting DMs in the decision-making.