Supplier selection in agile supply chain

Abstract

Purpose The recent global market trend is seemed enforcing existing manufacturing organizations (as well as service sectors) to improve existing supply chain systems or to take up/adapt advanced manufacturing strategies for being competitive. The concept of the agile supply chain (ASC) has become increasingly important as a means of achieving a competitive edge in highly turbulent business environments. An ASC is a dynamic alliance of member enterprises, the formation of which is likely to introduce velocity, responsiveness, and flexibility into the manufacturing system. In ASC management, supplier/partner selection is a key strategic concern. Apart from traditional supplier/partner selection criteria; different agility-related criteria/attributes need to be taken under consideration while selecting an appropriate supplier in an ASC. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Therefore, evaluation and selection of potential supplier in an ASC have become an important multi-criteria decision making problem. Most of the evaluation criteria being subjective in nature; traditional decision-making approaches (mostly dealing with objective data) fail to solve this problem. However, fuzzy set theory appears an important mean to tackle with vague and imprecise data given by the experts. In this work, application potential of the fuzzy multi-level multi-criteria decision making (FMLMCDM) approach proposed by Chu and Velásquez (2009) and Chu and Varma (2012) has been examined and compared to that of Fuzzy-techniques for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and Fuzzy-MOORA in the context of supplier selection in ASC. Findings It has been observed that similar ranking order appears in FMLMCDM as well as Fuzzy-TOPSIS. In Fuzzy-MOORA, the best alternative appears same as in case of FMLMCDM as well as Fuzzy-TOPSIS; but for other alternatives ranking order differs. A comparative analysis has also been made in view of working principles of FMLMCDM, Fuzzy-TOPSIS as well as Fuzzy-MOORA. Originality/value Application feasibility of FMLMCDM approach has been verified in comparison with Fuzzy-TOPSIS and Fuzzy-MOORA in the context of agile supplier selection.