Evaluating supplier sustainability using fuzzy 2-tuple representation

Abstract

In the last years, the participation of suppliers in the development, production, and distribution of products has increased. In this way, the sustainability of an organization depends more and more on these partners. The supplier sustainability assessment must be based on the economic, environmental and social tripod called the triple bottom line (TBL). Due to the recent adoption of qualitative metrics related to environmental and social issues in business management, models that deal with qualitative assessments based on experts’ judgments have been required. This paper proposes a supplier sustainability assessment model based on fuzzy 2-tuple linguistic representation using TBL criteria. A pilot application involving the evaluation of 11 suppliers using 13 criteria was carried out in a company that manufactures agricultural products. The application results indicate that supplier 8 presents the higher performance. The criteria evaluated as the most relevant are delivery schedule and product quality. Due to the use of fuzzy 2-tuple representation, the proposed model presents some advantages over the previous similar models, such as the ability to model quantitative and qualitative criteria as well as categorize the supplier's overall performance into groups defined by fuzzy linguistic terms.