Supplier selection in a construction company using fuzzy AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS

Abstract

Supplier selection is an important process for companies in the construction sector because of long-term projects and high cost. There are several criteria and alternatives to be considered in the construction industry and choosing the best multi-criteria decision‐making approach has become a critical step for selecting suppliers. Therefore, in this study, we analyze the problem of selecting the most convenient supplier for a construction company using two powerful multi-criteria decision‐making methods, Fuzzy AHP and Fuzzy TOPSIS. Due to the uncertainty embedded in problem’s nature and the ambiguity of the experts’ opinion, we prefer fuzzy methods. Various interviews were conducted with the experts at the companies in order to determine the criteria to be used in construction supplier evaluation. As a result of those interviews, 12 criteria that can be used for evaluating the alternative suppliers of the company were determined. This paper is comparing Fuzzy AHP and Fuzzy TOPSIS application results in a construction company in terms of determining the best supplier with respect to selected criteria. The contribution of this study is not only the application of the multi-criteria decision methodologies for supplier selection problem, but also it provides a comparison of two different multi-criteria decision making methods’ result.