Abstract
In traditional investment planning investment decisions are usually taken to be now-or-never, which the firm can either enter into right now or abandon forever. The decision on to close/not close a production plant has been understood to be a similar now-or-never decision for two reasons: (i) to close a plant is a hard decision and senior management can make it only when the facts are irrefutable; (ii) there is no future evaluation of what-if scenarios after the plant is closed. However, it is often possible to postpone,modify or split up a complex decision in strategic components, which can generate important learning effects and therefore essentially reduce uncertainty. If we close a plant we lose all alternative development paths which could be possible under changing conditions; on the other hand, senior management may have a difficult time with shareholders if they continue operating a production plant in conditions which cut into its profitability as their actions are evaluated and judged every quarter. In these cases we can utilize the idea of real options. The new rule, derived from option pricing theory, is that we should only close the plant now if the net present value of this action is high enough to compensate for giving up the value of the option to wait. Because the value of the option to wait vanishes right after we irreversibly decide to close the plant, this loss in value is actually the opportunity cost of our decision. In this work we will use fuzzy real option models for the problem of closing/not closing a production plant in the forest products industry sector.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alleman, J., Noam, E. (eds.): The New Investment Theory of Real Options and Its Implication for Telecommunications Economics. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston (1999)
Benaroch, M., Kauffman, R.J.: Justifying electronic banking network expansion using real options analysis. MIS Quarterly 24, 197–225 (2000)
Carlsson, C., Fullér, R.: A fuzzy approach to real option valuation. Fuzzy Sets and Systems 139, 297–312 (2003)
Carlsson, C., Fullér, R., Majlender, P.: On possibilistic correlation. Fuzzy Sets and Systems 155, 425–445 (2005)
Carlsson, C., Fullér, R., Majlender, P.: A fuzzy real options model for R&D project evaluation. In: Liu, Y., Chen, G., Ying, M. (eds.) Proceedings of the Eleventh IFSA World Congress, Beijing, China, July 28-31, pp. 1650–1654. Tsinghua University Press and Springer (2005)
Carlsson, C., Fullér, R., Heikkilä, M., Majlender, P.: A fuzzy approach to R&D project portfolio selection. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning 44, 93–105 (2007)
Cox, J.C., Ross, S.A., Rubinstein, M.: Option Pricing: A Simplified Approach. Journal of Financial Economics 7, 229–263 (1979)
Heikkilä, M., Carlsson, C.: A Fuzzy Real Options Model for (Not) Closing a Production Plant: An Application to Forest Industry in Finland. In: Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on Real Options, Rio de Janeiro, July 9-12 (2008)
Leslie, K.J., Michaels, M.P.: The real power of real options. The McKinsey Quarterly 3, 5–22 (1997)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Carlsson, C., Heikkilä, M., Fullér, R. (2010). Fuzzy Real Options Models for Closing/Not Closing a Production Plant. In: Kahraman, C., Yavuz, M. (eds) Production Engineering and Management under Fuzziness. Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing, vol 252. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12052-7_22
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12052-7_22
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-12051-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-12052-7
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)