A socially responsible supplier selection model under uncertainty: case study of pharmaceutical department of an Iranian hospital

Abstract

Effective performance of suppliers could improve responsiveness of network and heightens customer loyalty. Accordingly, supplier selection has become an important challenge for company managers in supply chain planning. Also, importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been emphasised by researchers that is disregarded in supplier selection scope. Inherent uncertainty of parameters is other issue that should be carefully considered in supply chain planning owing to undesirable effects of uncertainties on output decisions of network design. Therefore, a bi-objective multi-period supplier selection model is developed that minimises total of costs of network besides maximising social responsibility. To cope with uncertainty of parameters, a chance constrained possibilistic programming model is proposed. Extended model enables decision makers (DMs) to control riskaversion of output decisions. Finally, case study of pharmaceutical department of an Iranian hospital is employed to show efficiency and practicability of developed fuzzy socially responsible supplier selection model in real world problems.