A Composited Regret-Theory-Based Spherical Fuzzy Prioritization Approach for Moving High-Tech Manufacturing in Southeast Asia

After the pandemic, global supply chains will be in the process of restructuring. The relocation of production lines among countries is being considered for the purpose of sustainable development. The problem of determining the most suitable destination for manufacturers’ investments will become important, especially in the field of manufacturing high-tech products, which involves many complicated factors such as technological maturity, support policies, political issues, and technology security. In that context, Southeast Asia is seen as one of the regions attracting multinational manufacturers. To address this problem, a novel composited regret-theory-based spherical fuzzy prioritization approach is proposed. On the one hand, the super-efficiency slack-based model (super-SBM) of data envelopment analysis (DEA) is applied to evaluate efficiency, based on indicators. On the other hand, the novel spherical fuzzy regret-theory-based decision-making approach (SfRDMA) is developed and introduced to determine effectiveness, based on criteria. Then, the efficiency and the effectiveness of countries are combined by a composite-score function that is based on a geometric mean and an arithmetic mean. The findings imply that government policy, political stability, and human resources availability are the three most important criteria. Moreover, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia are identified as promising destinations for the world’s high-tech production lines.