An integrated fuzzy multiple criteria supplier selection approach and its application in a welding company

Abstract

Supplier selection is a strategic decision-making task for any company, as it engages multiple criteria for the evaluation and selection of alternate suppliers. So, multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) is a necessary approach in this domain. When both the qualitative and quantitative criteria are available and required to be evaluated simultaneously in decision making process for the supplier selection, a proper integrated approach is necessary to be adopted in order to select the best supplier and to find out the interrelationship structure within criteria. To address these issues, this paper proposes a unique integrated multi-attribute decision making (MADM) and mathematical programming (MP)-based model in a mixed environment (i.e., considering qualitative and quantitative criteria together) by combining decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL)-based on analytic network process (ANP), i.e., DANP, fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution, i.e., FTOPSIS and multiple segment goal programming (MSGP). Network relationship map (NRM) is used to outline the interrelationships among the dimensions and criteria. The novelty of the proposed supplier selection approach lies with the fact that both the qualitative and quantitative criteria have been considered in it. Sensitivity analysis has also been carried out to validate the result of our proposed methodology. In addition, the result of our proposed method is supported by DANP-based fuzzy VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (FVIKOR) technique and the best supplier has been identified. Delivery schedule and environmental collaboration are revealed to be the most and least important dimensions, respectively.