Using fuzzy DEMATEL for evaluating supplier selection criteria in manufacturing industries

Abstract

The concept of supply chain management (SCM) has received increasing attention from academicians, consultants and business managers. In the highly competitive scenario, suppliers play a vital role in making a business organisation successful. Supplier selection highly depends on experts' assessments. In the process of that, it inevitably involves various types of uncertainty such as imprecision, fuzziness and incompleteness due to the inability of human being's subjective judgement. This paper tries to evaluate the influence of effective factors in supplier selection by using fuzzy DEMATEL method. In this regard, three main criteria including management, logistics and organisational dimensions with 15 sub-criteria identified. Twenty experts from academics and practitioner have participated in this study. Results show that planning, partnership and collaboration has the most causal effect on other criteria and cost of logistics is mostly affected by other criteria in manufacturing industry supplier selection.