A two-sided matching model for complex equipment production of military–civilian merging platform with reference effects

Two-sided matching is a common research topic in our everyday life like marriage problem between men and women, schools and students. However, from the industrial perspective, the matching problem for complex equipment is a special research direction that needs professional participants that involve in the complex equipment production process. In this paper, a two-sided matching model for complex equipment production on the military–civilian integration platform is constructed that considers the reference satisfaction, and the reference satisfaction is firstly proposed which originates from operation management field. Moreover, the main influencing factors for complex equipment production are analyzed based on combined evaluation methods. The combined evaluation methods utilized in this research, one is DEMATEL (Decision Making Trial and Evaluation) method and the other is Grey–TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity for an Ideal Solution) method, are employed to acquire the joint importance results of the main analyzed influencing factors. The analyzed influencing factors are based on the evaluation indicators established in the evaluation indicator system for complex equipment production on the military–civilian merging platform, and the evaluation indicators are collected from relevant exist research. Then, suppliers and the manufacturers involved in the production of complex equipment give preference information to each other, and preference information is given on the basis of comprehensive analysis of the analyzed influencing factors which is by the aid of the aforementioned DEMATEL–Grey–TOPSIS analysis; meanwhile, the real satisfaction value of the suppliers and the manufacturers is obtained based on the preference value; then, the comprehensive reference satisfaction value could be obtained from the combination of the real satisfaction value and the expected satisfaction (real satisfaction value and disappointed satisfaction value), through aforementioned could we build a two-sided matching model for complex equipment on the military–civilian integration platform. Finally, we use a numerical example to illustrate the whole process about supplier–manufacturer matching for complex equipment production on the military–civilian integration platform.