Assessing the stability of suppliers using a multi-objective fuzzy voting data envelopment analysis model

Abstract

Sustainability has become a critical issue in supplier selection problems. Also, risk management in supply chains has become an important issue in supply chain management (SCM). The literature shows that there is no data envelopment analysis (DEA) research to evaluate suppliers by considering both sustainability factors and risk factors. This paper introduces a new concept entitled stability which is a combination of sustainability and risk indices. Due to the importance of assessment of suppliers in SCM, the current study not only develops a new DEA model for solving the voting system but also by employing an ideal candidate proposes a multi-objective DEA model to increase discrimination power using fuzzy efficiency method. Our developed method is applied in a case study to assess the stability of 26 petrochemical companies supplying raw materials to the Homa Rashten Aligodarz Industrial Group. Using the proposed models, the most stable supplier is determined. Moreover, according to the obtained results, the environmental criteria are determined as the most effective criteria on the overall preference ranking, and also, the Managers-based ranking is found as the most effect on the final overall preference ranking. A comparison between the proposed method and existing methods indicates that the presented method provides more reliable results.