Enhancing the Viability of Green Supply Chain Management Initiatives Leveraging Data Fusion Technique

Abstract

The assessment of viability for such GSCM initiatives is a crucial task to ensure strategic picking of the right initiatives and eliminate the harmful ones. A holistic assessment framework for viability assessment requires managers to rely on information sources that generate qualitative and subjective data, even often incomplete. To deal with the unique characteristics of subjective data, a data fusion technique, comprised of an integrated approach of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and the Dempster-Shafer theory, is applied in a hierarchical evidential reasoning (HER) framework. This HER framework is developed using the factors affecting the viability of GSCM initiatives. The result of such a proposed methodology is obtained in the form of an index of viability of GSCM initiatives throughout the supply chain. In addition to the Dempster-Shafer theory, the Yagers’ recursive rule of combination is applied to check the credibility of the calculation from DST. The proposed methodology can also be adopted and materialized by the practitioners to assess the condition state of the green management of any supply chain network.