Design model to select suppliers for multi level - Multi product industries

Abstract

Supplier selection is a multi-criteria decision making problem which includes both qualitative and quantitative factors. In order to select the best suppliers it is necessary to make a trade-off between these tangible and intangible factors some of which may conflict. Buyer should decide about two problems: which suppliers are the best and how much should be purchased from each selected supplier. The majority of previous supplier selection techniques do not consider strategic perspective. Besides, uncertainty is one of the most important obstacles in supplier selection. For the first time, in this paper, the idea of the algorithm "Knapsack" is used to select suppliers. Moreover, an attempt has to be made to take the advantage of a simple numerical method for solving model. This is an innovation to resolve any ambiguity in choosing suppliers. This model has been tried in the suppliers selected in a competitive environment and according to all desired standards of quality and quantity. To show the efficiency of the model, an industry sample has been uses. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.