Abstract
Increasing food supply chain sustainability means having to deal with many conflicting aspects and involves producers, several departments in distribution companies, and consumers. The objectives of this research are to develop models to solve real-world supplier evaluation problems and validate them with real data on fresh fruits in a supermarket chain. Literature review and results from a survey with managers from purchasing, logistics, and quality departments of a food distribution company are used to establish criteria, to first model the assessment of products and, second, to model supplier evaluation. A multicriteria hybrid approach is proposed, using multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) to assess the quality of products and Preference Ranking Organisation Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) to complete their evaluation with strategic criteria to be included in the second phase. The results allow companies to rank suppliers by product and classify them according to the main criteria categories, such as product strategy, food safety, economic, logistic, commercial, green image and corporate social responsibility. A sorting approach is also applied to obtain ordered groups of suppliers. Finally, the models proposed can form the core of a decision support system in order to create and monitor the supplier base in food distribution companies, as well as to inform sustainable decision making.
Highlights
The evolution of supply chain management over the last three decades has shown a remarkable change in company purchasing departments towards the strategic role of their activities, such as the evaluation of providers and the decision-making in this area
Criteria Decision Making approaches and criteria to deal with supplier evaluation and selection
Work products are only assessed by the quality indicator in the logistic platform, while the present research includes in-store consumer evaluation, applying multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) in both studies because the quality of a product only depends on its specifications
Summary
The evolution of supply chain management over the last three decades has shown a remarkable change in company purchasing departments towards the strategic role of their activities, such as the evaluation of providers and the decision-making in this area. As the literature provides thousands of research articles, there are many reviews focused on particular aspects and from different perspectives. Reviews of international journals classify research by decision-making problems, criteria, approaches and solving techniques, applications, journals, or methodological perspectives. Reviews vary in studied period and perspective, but all together offer a general view of the evolution, state of the art and recommendations for future research. Criteria Decision Making approaches and criteria to deal with supplier evaluation and selection. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) appeared as the method most applied to classify suppliers as Mathematics 2020, 8, 1952; doi:10.3390/math8111952 www.mdpi.com/journal/mathematics
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