Supplier Selection under Fuzzy Environment

Abstract

Selecting the right supplier in supply chain is of great importance for firms. Because, when the supplier is a piece of a well-organized supply chain, this relationship may affect the competition power across the entire supply chain. Supplier selection is so critical process that it requires to evaluate many factors likequality, delivery time, cost, technology, payment due, flexibility andcorporate reputation. Decision makers must consider these factors to select ideal suppliers. At this point, multi-criteria decision making methods (MCDM) help them to solve supplier selection problems. In this paper, considering the fuzziness in group decision making process, fuzzy set theory is used to deal with supplier selection problem of textile manufacturing firm. Ratings and weights of the criteria are expressed by linguistic variables. According to the proposed method fuzzyTechnique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), a closeness coefficient is calculated for obtaining supplier performance rankings.