An Integrated Decision-Making Approach for Green Supplier Selection in an Agri-Food Supply Chain: Threshold of Robustness Worthiness

Erfan Babaee Tirkolaee,Zahra Dashtian,Mehdi Soltani,Gerhard-Wilhelm Weber,Hana Tomaskova,Nasim Sadat Mousavi

doi:10.3390/math9111304

Abstract

Along with the increased competition in production and service areas, many organizations attempt to provide their products at a lower price and higher quality. On the other hand, consideration of environmental criteria in the conventional supplier selection methodologies is required for companies trying to promote green supply chain management (GSCM). In this regard, a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique based on analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is used to evaluate and rate the suppliers. Then, considering the resource constraint, weight of criteria and a rank of suppliers are taken into account in a multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MOMILP) to determine the optimum order quantity of each supplier under uncertain conditions. To deal with the uncertain multi-objectiveness of the proposed model, a robust goal programming (RGP) approach based on Shannon entropy is applied. The offered methodology is applied to a real case study from a green service food manufacturing company in Iran in order to verify its applicability with a sensitivity analysis performed on different uncertainty levels. Furthermore, the threshold of robustness worthiness (TRW) is studied by applying different budgets of uncertainty for the green service food manufacturing company. Finally, a discussion and conclusion on the applicability of the methodology is provided, and an outlook to future research projects is given.

Highlights

Chain management (SCM) is a set of methods applied for effective integrating of suppliers, producers, warehouses and buying centers to supply the customers with the required products, at the identified quantity, and in a certain time and place in such a way that the total cost of the chain is minimized, and the customers are satisfied with a high service level
The proposed method consists of a novel integration of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy TOPSIS
The allocation quantity to each supplier was determined by solving the proposed robust mixed-integer linear goal programming (RMILGP) model executed by CPLEX solver and using Shannon entropy method to determine the weights of the objective functions

Summary

Introduction

Chain management (SCM) is a set of methods applied for effective integrating of suppliers, producers, warehouses and buying centers to supply the customers with the required products, at the identified quantity, and in a certain time and place in such a way that the total cost of the chain is minimized, and the customers are satisfied with a high service level. GSCM is the integrator of SCM with the environmental requirements over all stages of product design, raw material selection and supply, production and manufacturing, distribution and shipment processes, delivery to customers and, after product consumption, recycling management in order to maximize the productivity of energy and resource consumption and improve the productivity of the whole supply chain. GSCM includes the process of supplying raw material, production, logistics management, distribution and service, consumption and recycling [3]

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