Supplier selection based on the PROMETHEE VI multicriteria method

Abstract

Nowadays, supplier selection has become a strategic activity for many companies that wish to increase the competitiveness of their supply chain. The tendency is to maintain a long-term relationship based on trust and commitment. To achieve this aim, it is necessary to re-structure the supplier selection process, incorporate more criteria in the evaluation and deal in an appropriate way with the preferences of the decision-makers (DMs) involved. Thus, this paper presents a structure for selecting suppliers that considers the preferences of multiple DMs involved in the process. It is considered that their preferences do not present great variation, it therefore being possible to deal with them adequately and to select the supplier who presents the best compromise using the PROMETHEE VI method. A numerical application is presented. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.