WITHDRAWN: Sustainable circular supplier selection for textile manufacturing industries in India: An integrated WINGS-MABAC approach

Abstract

The significant quantity of waste produced by the textile industry has recently sparked an increase in the adoption of Circular Economy (CE). To aim towards CE, companies should focus on selecting suppliers who share certain key characteristics, such as being compliant with the CE standards, recycling used resources to reduce waste, minimal use of water & energy. Till date, very few studies have managed to cover the in-depth analysis of suppliers on the basis of circularity and sustainability aspects. The criteria addressed in this study have been identified through thorough literature review and discussions with the experts. This paper addresses this problem with the aid of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework for sustainable circular supplier selection (SCSS) in the Indian textile industry. This study applies Weighted Influence Non-linear Gauge System (WINGS) - Multi-Attributive Border Approximation Area Comparison (MABAC) approach to estimate the importance of different criteria to select the best performing supplier of recycled cotton yarn for an Indian textile industry. WINGS is used to analyse the different criteria for evaluating suppliers in textile industry, while MABAC is used to select the most suitable sustainable circular supplier. Our results suggest that sustainable circular suppliers should be evaluated mainly on the basis of factors like whether or not the supplier is willing to collaborate, robustness, green certifications and the recycling capability of the suppliers. The proposed approach and decision-making model can help the managers of the textile industry to choose more sustainable suppliers, respond to fast fashion and maintain the competitive standard in the market. An illustrative application of the proposed framework is undertaken in an Indian textile micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME).