Supplier selection considering sustainability measures: an application of weight restriction fuzzy-DEA approach

Abstract

With the growing of consumer awareness in environmental and social issues sustainable development has become an essential element in supply chain management. Supplier evaluation and selection is one of the main strategic decisions for purchasing management in supply chain. This paper use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to propose a new model for evaluation and ranking of a given set of suppliers from sustainable point of view. The proposed model integrates the fuzzy set theory and DEA to consider the decision makers’ preferences and handle the ambiguity and uncertainty in supplier selection process. For this purpose, linguistic values in the form of triangular fuzzy numbers are used to assess the weights of criteria, sub-criteria, and the ratings of suppliers’ performance with respect to sub-criteria. Then, a fuzzy-DEA model, using α-cut approach, is developed considering weight constraints. An application from Supplying Automotive Parts Company (SAPCO) Company, which is one of the largest suppliers of automotive parts in the Middle-East, is presented to show the applicability of the proposed model. Finally, the proposed weight restriction fuzzy-DEA model is validated through comparing with one of the recent supplier selection methods.